Monsters in Kijuju
by Trinity Archangel
Summary: An unexpected death thrusts Chris and Jill back in Kijuju, with circumstances forcing wedges between preexisting relationships and enticing others, all within a backdrop of chaos.
1. Instant Message

Chris shot straight up, startled by the clatter of the remote falling onto the floor. He had fallen asleep on the couch again. What had torn him from his sleep now drew him into the bedroom, where he should have been but what was the sense? There was no room for him the way she slept. Writhing, moaning softly, constant with activity, body struggling to play out the actions in her mind. He was calling to her as he stumbled up the hall, guided only by memory and the pale streak of blue moonlight pouring through the balcony behind him.

"Jill, I'm coming," he mumbled, barely audible, lacking vigor. He pushed open the door and fumbled for the light switch. He found it, joined her on the bed where she was crying in her sleep, arms wrestling an invisible foe.

"Jill." He placed a hand on her bare shoulder and roused her gently. She barely responded to him but went willingly when he drew her into his lap and chased away her nightmares with his presence.

"Calm down," he rasped, lightly teasing her hair away from her face with his fingers, brushing his thumbs across her cheeks to dry her tears. She settled immediately without waking. Not that it mattered. She never remembered her nightmares or if she did, she never wanted to talk about them. He gazed down at her though half slanted eyes. The thin strap of her silk nightshirt had slipped down her shoulder and sloped revealingly across her breasts. His eyes would have lingered there, longingly, but it was always the gathers of skin on her chest that pulled his eyes north. She would always remember Wesker, and so would he.

Chris lifted the strap back over her shoulder and sat back with a heavy sigh against the headboard. He hadn't had a full nights sleep in months. Tonight would be no different. Jill's soft whimpering would lull her back to sleep eventually, and he would be burdened with sleeplessness. Awake, staring blankly at the wall ahead as shadows shifted across it and disappeared at the dawn. He glanced over at the digital clock on the nightstand.

Three o eight.

A glance down at Jill. Her eyes fluttered lightly behind closed lids. Was it right to be jealous? He didn't want to sleep anyway. He had nightmares Jill never coaxed from him. He sat up again slowly, easing out from behind her and settling her down on the pillows. He went back into the living room, found the TV remote and shut off the television. Turned and made a beeline to the flashing green light atop the computer desk. Jill never turned off the computer. Ever. Just like she never turned off her phone, though it seldom rang. Or her pager, although BSAA wouldn't be paging her until the psychologist cleared her for work. She never shut off lights anymore either, because it chased away the darkness personified that was perpetually in her mind. Jesus. As the sun slipped gently behind a blackened horizon, trading light for shadows, so fear seemed to erase bravery and grip her. And just like that, Jill was a windup toy until sleep took her. Perhaps she wore a mask of calm and was never truly at peace.

He leaned over the desk chair and turned on the monitor, ready to dismiss any open windows and close off the computer for the night. He slid the arrow over the online messenger to close the box, glancing quickly at the names on the list. Zero of fifteen friends online. Under that, a sub category, _BSAA._ One of seventeen friends online. _Shujaa23. _His brows lifted in surprise. Sheva Alomar was online at three in the morning, just like him. Wait. She was on the other side of the world, and greeted tomorrow before he finished today. He logged off Jill's name, signed into his own, far less frequented account and stared at her alias, debating. She had been idle for sometime, and might not respond. But if she did, he'd be glad for the company, albeit distant. What would he send her? A hi? An enthusiastic hello? He hadn't existed as more than an e- mail in months. He had typed out and sent a drab and flat _Hey_,before he had even made up his mind.

And then he stood there, hopefully hovering over the desk chair watching the blinking margin wait for his next command. Sheva remained idle. Maybe she left her computer on all day too. This was ridiculous. He didn't need the company that badly. He exited the window and was about to close out the programme entirely when the message box popped back up with Sheva's animated _Hey!_

He wasn't really expecting a response, but he was glad for it. Now he didn't know how to engage her, but the message service gave away her intentions. _Shujaa23 is typing._

_Shujaa23: Chris? What are you still doing up?_

She was apparently more conscious to time zoning than he was right now. Chris didn't know why he was marveling at the simplicity of her name. The tattoo boldly embellishing her shoulder and her age. He wondered if she changed her screen name every year. But lack of sleep will peak interest in the mundane.

_MrBSAA: Can't sleep. Why aren't you at work?_

_Shujaa23: Maybe I am. _

Stalemate. He had no conversation in him but he was desperate for it. He hoped Sheva would be more talkative than he was right now. _Shujaa23 is typing._

_Shujaa23: MrBSAA? Really? I haven't much room to talk but your screen name sucks._

Chris chuckled lightly. Yeah, it did. But Jill created the account for him. He wouldn't have done much better. He pulled out the desk chair and sat down.

_MrBSAA: I know._

Chris shook his head. He hadn't spoken to the girl in forever. Was this the best he could do?

_Shujaa23: How is Jill?_

Of course. Everyone always asked that question.

_MrBSAA: Getting beter evry day. How are thins in in Kijuju? _Send.

"Shit." He swore, proof reading his sentence after the fact. He wasn't the best speller in the world but now he was too drowsy to type properly. He probably looked like a jackass. She didn't seem to notice or mind his illiteracy.

_Shujaa23: I wish I could give you a positive report. Things are… difficult. But we continue to do what we can. Josh and I are still fighting the good fight._

Oh yeah, Josh.

_MrBSAA: How is josh?_

Not that he had to ask. Josh maintained an open line of communication with everyone he met. If you had to ask him what shoe size he wore you obviously never met the man. He was just that open.

_Shujaa23: Amazing. He's absolutely amazing. Amazing, friend, amazing man. Josh is a superhero. He doesn't stop._

Superhero, huh? She had referred to him as a superhero back when they were crossing the marshlands in an airboat, but with slightly less _gush. _Yes, she was gushing over Josh, and shamelessly so.

_MrBSAA: Thats allot of amasings._

Chris squinted at the screen with some disgust. At this hour he was sure he had butchered a few words in the sentence he just sent her but he wouldn't be able to correct it without a dictionary he wasn't coherent enough to operate. His fingers were moving faster than his mind could think. Sort of like now.

_MrBSAA: I can't spell anymore. Do you have a cam? Webcam?_

Hesitation. The flashing cursor was droning. He wanted to continue talking to her but not like this. His motor skills were asleep.

_Shujaa23: Yeah. Give me a minute._

He sat back in the desk chair, shirtless, exhausted, and dragging his fingers through his unruly hair. A second window loaded and Sheva's image popped up, adjusting the camera. She sat back down in front of the camera with a nervous smile. Chris didn't budge. He had forgotten he was attracted to her. He sat there with his fingers knitted in his hair, gawking unabashed at the voiceless woman on screen. She was young, physically disciplined and enchanting. Magnetic hazel eyes searched for him through the camera, smiling at his folly. She tapped the camera and shrugged. Chris leaned over and turned on the sound, minding the volume.

"Turn on your camera," she said. Her voice completed the memory he had of her. Exotic, alluring, constantly sensual. Sheva had been so focused on their mission she carried on seemingly unaware of her appeal. Yeah, he remembered her now. He turned on his own camera, glad his disheveled countenance would be covered by the darkness in his apartment.

Sheva squinted at the grainy image of Chris. The light from the computer screen in front of him barely accented his features. But she remembered him and tried to conceal her smile behind an act of indifference. But it was nice to see him again.

"Hey partner," he crooned.

The smile she tried to hide slid its way across her face.

"You sound tired."

"I am," he returned.

"Why don't you sleep?"

"No rest for the weary." He ruffled his hair again. No amount of finger combing could tame it now. He didn't even realize he was suddenly self- conscious. She carried her eyes away from his picture. He sighed again and sat back, throwing himself intentionally from the light of the computer screen.

"Turn on a light or something!" She chided playfully.

Chris shook his head. He wasn't about to wake Jill. Besides, in this cover, he could stare absently at her without consequence. She would talk, he would listen, and her conversation would carry him off to sleep, regardless of how cryptic her message. In her e- mails she spoke of a ravaged Kijuju, in constant warfare, plagued by neglect and looting. She spoke of it now because he had asked. And she spoke of it well into his subconscious, where the atrocities of Kijuju were negated by her melodious voice. He heard her, and only her, and somehow lost the gist after an hour had flown by, and the next true words he heard her speak were the desperate calling of his name.

He popped his head up from his folded arms, nesting atop the desk and stared at a blank webcam screen.

_Shujaa23 _had logged off hours ago with polite parting without his notice, and the person calling his name was Jill. It was morning. He looked back at the screen.

Shujaa23: _Goodnight, Chris. Maybe some other time._

He felt Jill snake an arm around his neck and press her face up against his in a hug.

"Good morning," she chirped. When he glanced up at her she greeted him with a polite kiss. She was dressed and ready for a morning jog.

He untangled her from around his neck and smiled. "What time is it?"

She sauntered over to the coffee table in the living room and picked up her holster and pager, pausing to affix them to her belt. She wouldn't be using any of them, but there was comfort in vain repetition.

"Twenty to seven."

Chris rubbed his eyes roughly, rising only to pull the vertical blinds closed from the sun streaking in and blinding him. She was in the kitchen pouring them both a hasty glass of orange juice, pushing in the fridge door with her foot.

"Do you ever sleep in your bed anymore?"

The question fell on deaf ears. Chris was lingering like a zombie against the frame of the sliding glass doors. She ducked below the cabinets to peer at him over the bar.

"Chris?"

He looked back at her. "Hmm?"

"Thanks. Again."

"Sure."

She furrowed her brows in concern. "Get some sleep, will you?" The glass of orange juice disappeared down her throat. She set it atop the counter before turning to leave.

"See you tonight," she called over her shoulder, slipping out through the door. Somehow, after she left, Chris felt the apartment lighten. But he would never tell her that.


	2. Still Bleeding Country

Their conversation was light and intermittent, an observation here, a return there, but somehow every word that rolled out of Josh Stone's lips were received by Sheva in the same light as an inaugural address. She was smitten, entangled and engrossed. Josh had evolved, in her mind, from crush to fantasy, and from fantasy to flesh, as every preconceived notion of Josh was realized in all that he did. It was rare that someone came to be all what you hoped for, but Josh was to her an embodied seraph, and her very delight came from appeasing his whims in some manner. This explained her in his company. Last in a convoy carrying supplies to compounds around Kijuju, their little flat bed truck ferried two tanks of clean water, sloshing around half empty behind them. The philanthropy was rewarding albeit tiring, and Sheva would never admit that volunteer work was not something she would have come to on her on accord, had Josh not asked her to accompany him in this work.

What was not to like of him? He was not brilliant, and held no degree, but he had so developed the faculties of his mind that little went beyond his understanding. He was admirable, dependable, and a source of inspiration to all who fell under the command of Captain Josh Stone. Sheva longed to admit her fancy but kept silent because somehow, she knew her romantic affections were unrequited. If it was the way he draped an arm around her when they walked—though it was for guidance— or the way their eyes connected in conversation—though it was him being earnest—then she was understandably conflicted.

"Sheva." A gentle hand made its way across the dark cabin and settled on her knee. It held no ulterior motive but she couldn't help but imagine it as an affection seeking gesture that melted her under his touch. Her admiring eyes were already on his face. His eyes were fixed on the road.

"Thank you for coming. Begrudgingly, but thanks."

"Anytime." Her voice was heavy from fatigue.

"At least we are doing good work for the country, which is more than I can say for the government right now." He could taste his own disdain in that sentence. "I don't think we could ever give the people enough water to wash all their shit into the river. I do not know about you but the prospect of going back to the BSAA compound to enjoy fresh running water is a bit bittersweet. I feel like an asshole in my own country. A 9 to 5 philanthropist."

"Don't dwell. We do what we can," Sheva replied through a yawn. Aside from Josh, riding along the compound border offered nothing to look at but the plain continuous surface of the compound wall to their left and a decaying town shrouded in darkness to their right. The instability of the dirt road was rocking her to sleep. Frankly, she was ready for bed. She would let Josh prattle on while she settled down for a snooze. She had closed her eyes for only seconds, remembering that she may have stirred a moment later to release her seatbelt clasp and nothing more.

When Josh realized he was talking to himself, Sheva's head was swaying willingly with every jerk of the car. He reached over and guided her toward the door to rest against. She did not stir under his gentle repositioning. While she slept like the dead she was resolutely a lady, as if she knowingly maintained a poise of femininity. She did not snore; her mouth was not ajar, and the concern for her county was not on her face, though she bore it with an internal strength Josh secretly envied.

"Humph."

The sound of a soft explosion stole his attention from the sleeping Sheva. A quick glance left greeted him with a spiraling Javelin diving toward the compound wall in front of him.

"Shit!" He smashed onto the brakes violently just as the explosion sent an orange fireball bursting with debris and charred remains raining onto their vehicle. The flaming Wrangler in front of them sailed backwards onto their vehicle and sent it cart wheeling off the road. They landed upright, crumpled like a soda can with the engine hissing steam and smoke. The airbags had deployed and filled the cabin with a burning dust attacking his senses. The accident left Josh quite disjointed. He was neither here nor there, and while the remains of their vehicle sat at a stop, his sense tumbled and spun. He refused the trembling of oncoming shock, forcing a second wind with the adrenaline pumping through him and as his head cleared, his sudden concern for Sheva drove him from his stupor. He reached down a trembling hand and tried to eject his seatbelt.

"Sheva," he called between coughs, wafting a hand in front of his face. "Sheva, answer me."

When she didn't respond he made his way out from the folded driver's seat, shoving the airbag into the steering wheel as he went. He rolled out from the wreckage with a thud, legs tangling in the seatbelt. The jolt of pain that shot through his body reminded him that he was human and that somewhere, something was broken.

"Sheva!" He called again, desperate for an answer. The prospect of her being dead had him screaming her name loud enough to hear him in the afterlife. He shuffled to his feet, bracing himself against the hot metal of his smoking vehicle and scrambled around to the passenger side. In the ire of the smoldering wreckage just ahead of him he could see her sprawled over the airbag, unconscious. He looked back up at the road from where they had been just a moment before. The convoy of six had been scattered with a devastating blow. There was a gaping hole in the compound wall, ready to welcome any manjini in the nearby savannah, but for now, the band of rebels responsible for launching the Javelin were raiding the supplies in a shiftless frenzy. If any of them decided to venture down the road side and search for spoils, they would find Sheva. He would rather her be dead than suffer the exploitation of her sex in their hands.

He threw open the door and unbuckled her, all the while murmuring encouragement he only hoped she could hear. Her weight was more than he could bear against his battered body, even dragging, and went but four steps before he had to let her lay where she fell.

"Be back," he announced, unconvincing, to no one as he drew his gun. Running up the roadside slope to join the exchange of fire between his comrades and the rebels, he thought if he could kill just one before dying from shock his death would not be in vain. He knew from the moment he drew his gun that death was probable, and from the moment he felt the first bullet ease into him, that death was infallible.

Chris was suspended in a place somewhere between consciousness and sleep, where he couldn't quite piece together fantasy from reality, so he wasn't certain if he was, in fact, being violently groped. If he was dreaming, this apparition was aggressive and relentless. The pang of pain dashed the possibility of a succubus—he wasn't dreaming, and Jill was assaulting him in her sleep. If only she shifted on the mattress, he would wake, far less being wound up in her hands. Her presence alone stirred about his serenity, but he had claimed the bed first, and she knowingly dared to join him. He sighed and unknotted her fist from his shirt, an action that succeeded unintentionally in waking her.

When she opened her eyes, she was staring at Chris' wide back and shoulders as he sat at the edge of the bed, hands covering his face. She knew he would never voice his frustration but she could hear his teeth gritting together. She reached out to him, coaxing him into her arms. He succumbed, in turn encircling her in his arms and settled quietly on his side facing her. Maybe he could drift to sleep before he completely lost the urge to do so. But her lips pressing onto his mouth stunned him.

"Sorry for waking you," She apologized softly, framing his face in her hands. He knitted his brows at her actions but didn't resist the second embrace of their lips. He sighed against her mouth and drew her closer, savoring her apology, but went no further than that. Their kisses were hollow and their intimacy was childish, but he had to be satisfied with this alone and no more. He didn't understand why Jill kissed him anymore but she always did it. He too had become her vain repetition.

He stared defeated into her blue eyes. How do you break up with someone you aren't really with anymore? She stared back, hoping he could find the courage she lacked. She didn't know how to let him go either. Neither of them had the energy to end their struggling relationship nor the interest to rekindle whatever it was they had between them. They were too well suited and that perhaps was a source among many of detraction.

He didn't even know what to say to her. He slid out of her arms to avoid the tension. His home was on the couch anyway. Jill nodded knowingly, and the moment he sat up from her she turned over and feigned sleep.

"Leave the light on for me," she pleaded softly as he exited the room. The light flipped on as he exited, pulling in the door softly behind him.

Maybe Sheva would be online again.

He barely made it three steps into the living room when he heard his phone vibrating across the marble countertop in the kitchen. He found the flashing blue face with ease and squinted at the caller. BSAA FREDERICKS. What did they want? If they wanted to deploy him in the middle of Afghanistan right now he would leave to avoid how awkward his personal life had become.

"Redfield."

"Chris?"

"Yeah."

"Got a minute?"

"Yeah."

A deep breath, a slow release. "Josh Stone is dead."

Chris felt his eyes widen. For an unbelievable moment, the whole world paused, and his body went numb. He couldn't even feel the phone in his hands anymore. His heart wasn't beating, he wasn't breathing; he didn't exist. The floor wasn't beneath his feet. When his mind finished processing the devastating news, he turned, saw Jill at the hall entrance gawking at him, her own phone pressed against her ear, her face mirroring his own distraught expression.

A white button down dress shirt and black slacks stuck to the muscular form of Chris Redfield. He hadn't expected to be back in this country so soon, and certainly not under these conditions. He never would have expected to be attending Josh Stone's funereal less than a year after he left the country. What a bullshit way to die; gunned down by a band of rebels.

Josh Stone was a good man. He loved easy, fought hard and thought that getting fall down drunk in bars was the best way to spend a weekend. But he laughed at himself to avoid pity, and he'd once confided in Chris that Kijuju would still be Kijuju after he had gone, just with a new love for detesting America's involvement in their affairs. Chris pointed out that he would be guilty by association and hated too. Josh said he welcomed any form of love his countrymen accepted, even if it was a love for hatred. Irony killed him months later.

Chris hated funerals. He propped his elbows on his knees and hung forward with his head drooping, hands locked behind his head. Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, _bullshit._ Why would fate take him this way? But that was the problem with life. It rained on the just and the unjust. A baby is born dead; a soldier survives a war and is killed in the city, and parents burn alive in car crashes, leaving two unprepared teenagers alone in the world. He didn't know why he felt like passing out, but Jill must have noticed him suffering because he felt her very encouraging hand on his arm, cradling him at the elbow. He didn't look at her but allowed her to take his hand into her own. He gave her a thankful and reassuring squeeze for attempting to comfort him. He linked fingers with her. He needed her.

He felt her rising, ushering him to his feet. When he looked over at her he realized she hadn't been paying him a bit of mind. Her head bowed, her eyes closed, and she joined the rest of the congregation in prayer. Chris felt slighted and embarrassed for himself. He scanned the congregation quickly before dropping his head for a familiar face. Sheva was front row right, mere feet from the coffin, dressed traditionally in black, a modest pencil skirt and collared jacket. She was present only in the flesh. She was dead inside, and it was obvious. Chris felt the sea of people part as he focused in on her sullen, resoundingly beautiful expression. There was something endearing about the way she mourned, the way she cared. It moved him internally, and suddenly, he wanted to teleport next to her and share her burden. But he was lost in the body of the crowd, and linked between two hands cementing him in place. He would see her later, and apologize for her loss, he decided, but when he lifted his head from a unified _amen_, she was gone before he had sat back down with the congregation.

Just that fast? He turned his head to look at the rear, catching barely a glimpse of her as she pushed through the church doors in haste, barely disturbing the ground beneath her clicking heels. Chris popped up, detaching from Jill's hand. No one else was running after her.

"What's wrong?" Jill whispered, tucking her knees to the side so he could ease past her and out into the aisle.

He latched onto his swaying black tie so it wouldn't smack her in the face. "I'll be back…" He didn't say another word as he started up the aisle in matching pace, leaving Jill sitting baffled. When he pushed open the back doors, Sheva was leaning against a wall in the lobby with a red-face and tear stained cheeks blemishing her usually flawless skin. She recognized him immediately, and urged by a pang of embarrassment, turned away from him. She never expected Chris Redfield to be coming after her at this very moment but then again she wasn't expecting anyone to come after her. The only person that would have was dead. She took the crumbled up tissue in her hand and dabbed her eyes furiously as he approached with his hands buried in his pockets.

"You alright?" He asked, stopping short. It was a stupid question because the answer was obvious.

He got a vague nod. She hadn't seen him in months and here she was, crumbling in front of him like a child. She averted her eyes, but Chris was a hard figure to miss. If not for the rich purple carpeting at her feet, or the potted plants guarding the sanctuary entrance, there wasn't much to look at. She cleared her throat, tried to speak, failed, felt the embarrassment creeping back into her face when she realized she was too much of an emotional wreck to articulate.

Chris stood by idly, tracing her with his eyes, unconsciously admiring her though inappropriate, but he couldn't shake his attraction despite the situation not warranting these feelings. This was not the Sheva he had left behind with a hearty handshake, a hasty hug, and several awkward moments of eyeball pong leading to that separation. That Sheva was a drawn sword, and that Chris had yet to deal with the hardships reuniting with Jill would bring. Somehow, though, this Sheva appealed to him.

"You want to get out of here for a while?" He offered, asking for himself as well. The next funeral he planned to attend was his own. Sheva was flooded with relief at the suggestion. Anywhere was better than here, than now, than staring at Josh's casket with the closed lid and regretting all the things she never got to do with him, the words she never spoke to him, the life she never lived with him. She nodded again.

When she started past him for the bathroom he hooked a hand into the crook of her arm to stop her, feeling the tug of her resistance against him but her will was not stronger than his might. He guided her toward him firmly, inviting her into his arms for the consolation she so desperately needed. Words did little to comfort. She fell into his embrace, a surprisingly tender, uncharacteristic gesture she accepted greedily. He smelled mildly of sweat and fading cologne that was rapidly losing its allure in her congestion. When she nestled her face against his chest, his heavy heartbeat was steady, alive. She would never be with Josh like this again.

The tears came, uncontrollably so, and she fought against herself to pull away from Chris and suffer this emotion alone or absorb him into her arms as it seemed she was trying to do. He ignored the pull of his clothes in her clenched fist and the moisture spreading across his chest. But enough. He felt it best to distance himself from her.

He slackened his grip, an action that only made her draw closer to him. She was not ready to let go. He placed his hands on her face, easing her away. She darted her eyes up at him, brimming with tears, and there she met the features of a man unaffected by her frailty. He was unyieldingly compassionate, but his eyes ferried away a lustful agenda she may have imagined. For a moment, he pressed closer to her with equal enthusiasm, his nose grazing hers so lightly it may have been accidental, the brush of his ever-present whiskers enticing a wholly improper thought that misguided her emotions. A flicker of permission passed through her eyes when his lips parted, but it was only to speak.

"I'll wait for you." He gestured to the bathroom with his head.

He took a step back out of her arms, feeling her lingering hands sliding off his body, every grazing fingertip an opportunity to renege on his actions. His hands found his pockets again, decisively ending their interaction. He did not catch the subtle disappointment on her face because it was muddled by the reddening tinge of shame. It was the first time she had lost sight of Josh, and in Chris's arms nonetheless. When she disappeared behind the bathroom door, a sigh of relief steamed out of him. His slacks were getting tight.


	3. Desperate Escape

Kent is water filled PET plastics on galvanize roasting in the sun for sanitation. It is swirling clouds of dust blowing through desperate structures. It is a makeshift construction of a town seemingly put together by the remains of a civilization it has failed to mock. Kent, like most of Kijuju, is depressed by isolation. The BSAA compound attached to Kent is bordered by a simple chain link fence topped with barbed wire stretching the entire property, laced with patrolling guards lazily toting about automatic weaponry. Poverty was but a glance away. Through the chain links, Kent existed within a massive wall nicknamed Jericho to keep out the majini. The west of the Kent compound teased a glance at freedom through the hastily applied Jericho walls where its construction stopped abruptly at the lip of the Nyamaza River that ran though the both the BSAA and Kent compounds. When it was discovered that the majini couldn't cross running water, the citizens of Kent were the only compounded region in West Africa to see beyond the walls of confinement, only to glimpse at the loitering majini haunting the savannah.

With the majini devoid of all morality and judgment dragging about the savannah for months, lacking the sense to sustain and maintain themselves by any means, it was easy to imagine that these animated corpses were rotting away slowly under the hot African sun and served as the primary source of stink in Kijuju. To counterbalance the smell, many began to burn herbs. The dying flesh, along with the pungency of burning incense had Chris pinching his nose.

"Jesus…" He muttered. Suddenly the Coke can he held in his hand seemed less appealing. He surveyed a group of young boys idling by, wringing their shirt tails in their dusty hands with anticipation, praying only for the empty can, so when Chris thrust out the full Coke in their direction the can and the boys were gone before he could turn his head.

"We don't have to do this, you know?" She reminded. He didn't _seem_ like another arrogant American trying to begrudgingly cope with the fact that he was sitting at roadside bar in a chair that did not match that of his company, a carpet of sand beneath his dress shoes and a table cloth of stains adorning his very elegant overturned banana crate, but if it made him the slightest bit uncomfortable she would gladly leave. The ambiance of arguing nearby was especially enchanting.

"I'll be fine," he insisted, doing a great deal of snuffing to rid his sinuses of the strong odor. He was being polite. She watched him reach up a hand and tug on his tie to loosen it, popping open a few button on his collar with ease. A pity he didn't continue down the length of the shirt, but sweat had exposed his form beneath the thin material, and every subtle movement sent the mechanisms of his muscles into a motion that drew her eyes to him with intrigue. He was a thankful distraction at best, but when she pulled her eyes away from him her mind went back to the horrors of reality. Kijuju was still ravaged, and Josh was still dead. Chris Redfield was temporary.

The next time she looked at him it was for the hope of assurance.

"Chris…After the T-Virus took Raccoon City…What became of it?"

Chris seemed as reluctant to answer as she was to ask. "There's no more Raccoon City."

He didn't know what response she was hoping for, but that wasn't it. She slumped back into her wicker chair and sighed. She had been stiff as a board since the wreck as her range of motion took a backseat to aching muscles. Maybe jilting the funereal for a quick drink was a bad idea. Talking to Sheva over the computer masked Chris' lack of etiquette and bumbling awkwardness. There was no hiding it now. He barely knew how to engage her then, and now sitting across from her had him fumbling with his tie to hide his sudden social imbecility.

Once again she found words to break the silence. "I haven't left the BSAA compound since…you know. This is the farthest outside the fence I've been." Her voice rose some, to drown out the words only she knew to be swearing.

Chris glanced up at her. They were fifty yards at most from the fence. He could jog over to the gate and be back in the BSAA compound in moments. To Sheva, it was a milestone.

"Yeah?" That bland response seemed typical of him lately.

Sheva nodded sadly. "Stuff like this happens all the time. The government doesn't fund the military, the soldiers aid the rebels and then…"

Chris nodded knowingly. He understood perfectly what happens when people govern themselves and when a radical group becomes violently outspoken.

"Sometimes I wish I was lying next to him."

"Don't say that," Chris added quickly. He wanted to deter her mindset. It was destructive. Staying positive kept him from spiraling down into the chasm of darkness with Jill. But she was slowly pulling him in.

The argument that Sheva tried to ignore set her fingers rattling across the tabletop. She would never admit how uneasy it made her feel. She was all too familiar with arguments turning into riots igniting into genocide, and she had seen it all before when the Tutsis and Hutu fell against one another in Rwanda and again when the deputy presidential candidate in West Africa was revealed by associates to be a former member of the Wit Wolwe. Despite how bad things were, it was a little pessimistic of her to set her mind to _riot_ because of loud voices. But this was Kent, after all, and the people were openly against the BSAA. But to satisfy her nerves, she popped up from her seat, apologizing for her abruptness. "Can we go? Please?"

Chris balked. What? Was it something he said? Didn't say? Had she had enough of his dry wall personality or his uninspiring response to her peril? He had forgotten how to comfort, and drew up out of his seat ready with an apology, when he realized the escalating argument just by their table had taken a turn for the worse. Of the three men, two were gesturing wildly, and the third, idled between them uninvolved, became motivated to violence with the rising voices, and turned with indiscriminate bloodlust on his party, sinking his teeth into the soft flesh at the base of the neck of his comrade.

Chris blinked, as if he doubted the realism of the scene, but it was happening. A soldier in camouflage and flip-flops, stormed over and shouted at the man, red-eyed and otherworldly. He lunged at the soldier, took a series of bullets into his abdomen without slowing before whirling and falling down into the sand. The whole incident had everyone's attention but the next act stole the show. The fallen man resurrected with a jolt, and with a gurgle rumbling in his throat, shot up and threw himself at the soldier. The crowd that drew scattered, and the soldier, now rattling with the burst of gunfire from his automatic, spread the panic with his exclamation,

"Majini!"

It was as if a match had been dropped into a vat of gasoline. The word sent a kind of electricity through the people, each one in turn uttering the word in despair. The presence of a majini, the soldier's burst of gunfire, and the knowledge that when there was one majini, there were many sent the people scattering. Chris wordlessly accepted Sheva's invitation to leave. This was not their fight. The gate was only fifty yards away.

"Come on, Sheva." Chris tried to sound calm, but the whole scene had disrupted him. She followed after him, and unconsciously responding to the command in his voice muttered a compliant "Roger." Chris went from walking, to walking briskly, and broke into a jog before long, and when he didn't feel Sheva nearby, he reached out a hand behind him. Yeah, he was panicking. The gate to the BSAA compound was getting crowded because it was guarded, and he hoped his status as BSAA would give him amnesty to break through this sudden surge of people and distance himself from the possibility of rising chaos. He felt Sheva's hand glide into his. Relief. He couldn't speak a word of Swahili to pardon himself through the crowd of shouting, shoving Kentians, so when his excuse me's got him nowhere he started to shove. The people around him were smothering him like closing walls, and the rushing bodies did little to support his connection to Sheva.

Sheva could see every fiber of Chris' composure pulling apart. He wasn't accustomed to this sort of unsettled society. And while the presence of a majini set her mind racing with a million possibilities of how something like that could have happened, it didn't dull her concern for her very frazzled leader, trying to weave her through an increasingly thickening crowd of fearful citizens, rushing to the gate for protection. He was moving so fast their fingertips were barely touching, and when the next person darted through their slipping hands their connection was severed and Chris vanished in the mass.

By the time Chris looked over his shoulder, Sheva was lost. The buzzing multitude drowned out any possibility of hearing his name, and while he had a slight height advantage, he couldn't pause for one moment to gaze over the top without being forced forward by brushing shoulders and eager hands.

"Sheva! Sheva!"

Maybe he heard his name. Maybe he didn't. In his dread faces blurred. He had just stupidly lost his protection in a sea of xenophobic Africans. Though their eyes only touched him with minimal disgust, had they not been in a state of alarm he would be wearing their aversion like a cloak.

"Goddammit. Sheva!" Up on his toes again scanning the crowd, he couldn't see her, but what he did notice were the infected. They would have been indistinguishable had they not been surging in from the rear of the crowd shouting garbled Swahili and mauling anyone in reach. How did they compromise the wall? No matter. The next instant he had been whirled around, the guards opened fire into the crowd, aiming at nothing, hoping the infected were among the fallen. He joined the masses in a simultaneous duck, feeling misfortunate few fall beside him, splattering him in blood.

Sheva suddenly appeared beside him, covering her head. It was easier to find him. The fence. As if they shared the thought, they threw themselves against the links in desperation, trying to call the attention of the BSAA in the guard towers on the other side. Chris felt clawing hands tearing at his clothes, trying to climb over him to brave the barbed wire at the top. Sheva felt desperate hands clinging to her own. Children had been flocking to her for protection but she could barely save herself.

"Fuck! Sheva, climb!" Chris instructed, ignoring the feet digging into his back, the bodies trying to sail over one another like fish in a net. No sooner than he had lifted his foot to the fence than a deafening blast of gunfire threw off the bodies above him. Someone landed on him forcefully, taking him to the ground. No one was going to breach the dividing fence.

"Chris! Are you ok?" Sheva was at his side, as usual, her courage augmenting in the absence of his ability. Such was their ebb and flow. Their roles as guardian and sufferer interchanging per circumstance like a see saw. She grabbed a handful of his dress shirt and tried to tug him to his feet. Her violent insistence for him to rise shook some sense back into him, and he tried to get up on his knees without toppling over. He struggled to his feet, the slick bottoms of his dress shoes offering him no traction. He felt Sheva tugging his arm—he could only follow the insistence of her pulling at this point. A far off he could see the hazy figures of men dragging forward, and behind them, a spreading crowd of majini blindly raging into Kent, propelled by the bloodlust of Uroboros.

Seeing the shadows of their irregular movements surging through the mob seemed to put things immediately into perspective. The onslaught of a pending headache would have to debilitate him later. They would head west to the river, to the only source running through both compounds, while the survivors scattered from the majini and arbitrary gunfire of equally frightened foot soldiers. Fueled by adrenaline, together the two of them slipped into the wispy shadows of an approaching dusk with nothing to arm themselves other than their own determination.

Jill felt her hair stand on end when the familiar whistle preceding an impending explosion screamed its arrival into Kent's atmosphere. In a rush of fear she felt for Chris only to remember he had dashed out of the church just twenty minutes before. A knowing gasp disturbed the calm of the congregation as they all prepared for the blast—which came though muffled, thankfully distant, but nevertheless reverberating all the way to the walls of the church and rumbling softly like a gentle quake. A few lights flickered before the collective sense returned to the funeral attendees. That had been fired from the guard towers.

"Chris!"

Jill shot up out of her seat and into the aisle, already crowded with the curious mass flooding the doors to get out. By the time she had poured outside, there was a cloud of dust ballooning out over Kent, just northeast of them. And somehow she knew without reason that Chris was not among the crowd of spectators.

"Oh God." The knot of fear that wound up in the pit of her stomach was crippling. She began her frantic search in the crowd for his face, called to him to no avail for an answer, ignoring the concerning glares she got in passing. By the time she accepted that he was in fact, nowhere near her hopeful speculations, the dust from the explosion was settling, and out from the fog of smoke and ire the screams of the damned. Kent was falling apart.

Chris stole a quick glance around the corner. Fowls and goats mulled about in dirt yards fenced with chicken wire while piles of debris still smoldered into the air, the owners of the remnants nearby wailing over their misfortune. The echoes of loss and suffering welcomed them the further west they pressed into Kent. The majini had already been there, leaving destruction in their wake. Dead bodies littered the streets. Homes were blazing so strongly Chris and Sheva had to hold their noses from the sulfur. The voices of the dying rose like spirits. Chris was glad he couldn't understand a word of it, although the message of sorrow was clear.

Chris went down on his haunches next to Sheva, who had begged a moment to catch her breath. He was a disarrayed mess. Jostling though the throng in the opposite direction was like passing through a grater. His black slacks were tanning from debris and his wing tips did little justice on this dry terrain. He stole a glance at Sheva. Her brown skin was misted with sweat, sticking unruly strands of hair to her throbbing temples. They were a stone's throw from the Nyamaza River. He could hear it rushing behind the embers of a marketplace across the street.

"Ready?" He asked, touching her shoulder lightly. She nodded, popping to her feet sans heels with the aid of the hand he offered to her. They darted through the charred remains of the marketplace, ignoring the possibility of being spotted. The majini were well behind them now.

They rounded the edge of the compound wall, partially dilapidated because construction had ceased. Chris felt his feet sink into the soft sediment of the riverbank and struggled to stay afoot. Sheva slapped a hand over her nose and mouth and turned away from him.

"It stinks!"

As if her exclamation was cue, Chris lurched away from her to vomit up whatever was left in him. He swore between gags.

"It smells like the Styx out here!"

Before them, the Nyamaza River rushed softly along the perimeter of Kent, ferrying the bloated bodies of the deceased like logs. Many had died on the embankment, leaking their remains into the water, tangled in the mile long littering of clothes laid out to dry on the stones. Discarded buckets of excrement lay tangled in the askew fingers of the fallen. Flies danced over the bodies and now rushed to meet Chris hovering over his vomit like a dog.

Sheva came up beside him and placed her hand on his shoulder as he was wiping his mouth with the tail of his undershirt. He glanced up at her, but she was staring across the water to the other side. Seeing her brethren massacred had renewed a bit of vigor. Josh died believing that his country would change. She felt her eyes brimming with tears again but she mashed them shut and forced them away.

Chris rose to meet her. "Are you ok?"

She nodded slowly, absently clutching her sides. "There are monsters in Kijuju."

"There are monsters everywhere," Chris assured, appearing in front of her. He bent over and signaled for her to climb onto him. He sighed when he felt her weight settle onto him, rising so she could hook her legs around him. She wrapped her arms around his neck lightly and closed her eyes, feeling him moving slowly between her as he trudged toward the gurgling river. When he plunged his legs into the icy water, he was surprised to feel the pull of the stream raging against him. Another step, then another, and before long he was waist deep. Sheva shuddered against him, but he gave her legs an encouraging tap and she held him tighter until their heartbeats thudded together like a drum. He reached up and hooked his fingers over her forearms so she wouldn't choke him, trying to unplug himself from the riverbed. Chris hoped his valiance would get them down river unnoticed.

"Hold on."

Rushing water covered his shoulders, lapping against his ears. At its deepest point, it was probably eight feet and if he could walk across the bottom to the other side they probably wouldn't be under water for more than a minute. He sucked in a deep breath and plunged below the surface where instantly he felt his head tingling with the onset of another headache. Holding his breath did him little justice. Sheva ducked her head; to brace the impact of the water and to pray their safe passage. The rushing water swept them up, and ferried them downstream toward the BSAA's invisible boundary. A desperate escape obstructed only by the bobbing bodies brushing against them. Despite that, they swirled in the current, Sheva fastening tighter to Chris the moment she felt his body slipping from her arms, not knowing she was jerking him back into a consciousness he hadn't missed each time. He didn't even realize they had breached the opening in the fence, but Sheva's detachment brought him to. He sank willingly to the bottom, pushed off from the murky settlement and joined her on the bank successfully, coughing, gagging, trembling, but alive.

Sheva lay flat on her back, her clothes dismantled, chest heaving, uncaring of how she might come across to an emerging Chris trying to keep his sagging pants above his hips. He flopped beside her in stunned silence, trying to untangle his tie from around his neck. They were safe. Exhausted, Sheva turned her head to face him. He reached out a shaky hand and embraced her own, feeling the genuine concern for him in her weak touch. Between their ragged breaths, their touch transmitted an entire conversation. This time, Chris was first to speak. She had heard him say it before, but it lacked the desperation she remembered.

"Stay with me."

This time it was tender. She closed her eyes in a thankful moment, and while she could no longer see the horrors of her country blazing, she could not close her ears to the ghostly wails of her dying countrymen, or ignore the much appreciated connection to the man holding her hand.


	4. Ignoring Thirst

Chris sat forward on the edge of the bed with his face buried behind a pair of trembling hands. Was there no pleasant memory for him of Kijuju? His mind was still experiencing rushing down that river with Sheva stapled to his back, shoving away discoloured bodies with a detached mind, as though he was moving away any innocuous float. He ignored his fingers gliding off the rubbery flesh of the drowned, the intrusion of foul water forcing into his pursed lips, his body being torn apart by jagged rocks. He ignored it because he had to, because he had to suppress acknowledging that insanity to pursue life. But now he didn't have to, and there was no distraction of survival to block those thoughts from entering his mind.

A pair of hands wrapped around his wrists and dragged down his hands from his face, a forceful but thankful intrusion. Jill was on her haunches, between his knees, brows furrowed in concern. When she met his tormented eyes, she saw a reflection of her own hell, but he chased away those thoughts with a blink.

"Chris…I'm actually worried about you..." She admitted. "But I'm so glad you're ok." She stood, wrapping her arms around his bare neck in their second embrace of the evening. He was suddenly conscious to the battery his body had taken in her arms, but was glad for the comfort nonetheless. He scratched her back affectionately, running his fingers along her spine and nuzzling his whiskered face against her. This intimacy, though understood to be taken at face value sent her backing out of his arms with the same speed she went into them, reminding him abruptly of the distance that existed between them. He somehow felt her hasty retreat showed how disconnected she was from him and Jill, as usual, was completely unaware of how she rejected offers that did not exist.

Somehow, it still stung. His face disappeared behind his hands again until he felt her added weight on the bed next to him. When he looked at her she was dragging off a pair of sheer leggings from under her light grey skirt, a gesture that would have enticed him several months ago. He dared to meet her eyes but fell short of the target. Jill's eyes were on the clock on the nightstand, concern for the coming dusk creeping up on her. He could trace the lines of worry spreading over her face like fissures, disrupting an otherwise perfect landscape. It was difficult to watch her psyche mend on its own at dawn, and dissolve at the dusk.

At least she had someone to lean on. Sheva's only hope was still waiting to be transported out of the BSAA compound when the dust settled over Kent.

"I can't believe this is happening…" Chris mused softly.

Jill nodded, sighing softly. She hadn't seen Chris so disturbed before, and she didn't know what to do with him. Days past, she could have soothed him without words. A gentle rustle in his hair to get his notice, an empathizing kiss to keep it, an embrace, a precursor to foreplay that led to a passion that she could barely recall in memory. But that was for lovers. The more she watched him, the more he dissolved, and when she noticed his lashes tipped with tears that refused to spill, she could not pick up on the desperation in them and that it meant a man as immoveable as Chris was pleading for her empathy. Chris was her foundation, and if he was collapsing, what would become of her? She plucked her towel off the bed and started for the bathroom, opting to avoid him. She left the door sprawling open though it was not an invitation for him. If he found himself in there he'd be shunned back into the bedroom with a contemptuous look, like a dog being shooed from the couch. But he would have loved to have her arms around him again—any arms, to still his quivering body and ground him in the here and now. But she wouldn't. It was still too early for her to need him.

Jill had so casually snubbed him that he didn't wish to be ignored another moment. Chris got up stiffly, finally buttoning the fly on his jeans and bent to fish through the suitcase at his feet for a utility shirt to slip over his bruised skin. Maybe he had made up his mind back in the church, but he would act on things now.

"I'll be back." he announced. He didn't wait for her response.

* * *

His destination was just a jog across the court yard. Outside of the circumstances he would have been able to appreciate the isolated beauty of the BSAA housing development, a mocking oasis amidst the tyranny of a plagued and pitiable Kent, and beyond that Kijuju, understandably detesting this boastful structural testament of western wealth, power, immune to the tragedy surrounding it. It was rich with luxuries, including a pool Chris rounded with indifference, noting how heavily he wore his torment on his face; it surprised him. He managed to ignore the thudding of turret guns being fired in the distance. There would be no one left in Kent before sunrise.

At Sheva's door he hesitated, debating how forward it would be to show up without an invitation. How inappropriate it would be to want her company when she hadn't a moment alone to mourn Josh's passing? He lingered outside her door, far longer than he should have, debating the motive of his visitation, when he found himself knocking. The door cracked and a hazel eye greeted him from beneath the links of a door chain. For a reason she had yet to embrace, seeing Chris standing outside her door brightened her dampened spirits.

"Chris…"

He greeted her with a tired smirk that faded slowly into a troubled frown. The door shut, the chain came down and soon he was staring into an unusually kempt studio apartment, dimly lit and buzzing from the sound of a radio somewhere inside the abode where Sheva stood guard at the entrance scanning him with her eyes. He was as rattled as when she'd left him at the guard house but she stood aside and invited him in.

"Is this a bad time?"

"Of course not." She gestured to a couch in the living room and followed after him. "I just got out of the shower."

Yes, she had. The scent of her shampoo and body wash met him at the door and the khaki shorts she donned left little to the feeble imagination of Chris who had undressed her so many times before he made it to the couch that he was mentally exhausted before he sat and unable to drag his eyes away from her. Her skin was still wet when she slipped on that shirt. He caught on to his staring before she did, thankfully, and turned his attention to his environment. Sheva's apartment was immaculately clean, lacking personality and evidence of occupancy. It surprised him how little of her could be derived from the décor. Or lack thereof. If not for the little black radio perched on her kitchen counter, spitting out static and an aggressive message in Swahili that all seemed cryptic to him, there would be little life. Chris leaned over his knees and knitted his fingers. Where to begin?

"I just wanted to see if you were alright. Today was hard for me, I'll admit."

"I know. I really appreciate you coming by." She took a seat next to him, taking a decorative pillow into her lap as an unintentional divider between them. Chris found a spot between his feet to focus on.

"Yeah? I didn't want to impose."

Sheva made a face he didn't see. "Don't be silly. I'm sorry it's not so inviting in here. It's not usually like this. I've just been cleaning a lot lately…to cope." Cope. What a disparaging word. What an ineffective term to describe a futile attempt at doing the impossible. To cope, Leon Kennedy indulged in women, Barry Burton avoided crowds, and Jill left on lights and refused to close doors. Coping dealt with nothing. It avoided the problem at all costs and was somehow an acceptable mechanism most people employed.

Chris nodded absently. "Sheva…" he started, finally meeting her eyes. "I'm _so_ sorry about everything. About Josh…"

Sheva held his kindly gaze, silently accepting his sincere condolences because at the very mention of his name her throat closed. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat.

"I know how much he meant to you and I wish I could have been there. I dunno what I could have done but…"

She cut him off softly. "It's okay. We were with a whole convoy and nothing helped."

Chris furrowed his brows and found the invisible spot between his feet again. She seemed to have retreated into herself at the mention of Josh's name. Her focus dimmed as she quietly reflected on the deceased. The more she rooted herself in thought, the less presence she offered. It was still so hard to accept him as dead.

"There is _nothing_ left for me in Kijuju now."

Her sentence came as a ghostly whisper, so heavily laden with sorrow that Chris pondered how much existed between them alive that still kept pulling her toward him in the grave.

"It gets better," Chris consoled, although he didn't know for sure. He absently shot out a hand and found her knee, meaning only to comfort, but when he felt the supple warmth of her skin beneath his heavy hand, he could not suppress the carnal thoughts that seemed to haunt him when she was near. Sheva did not shy away from his touch. In fact, she could feel the gravitational pull between them as strongly as he did, but she did not entertain the notion of romantic possibility. It would be just like her to imagine an attraction that simply did not exist, just because Chris was kind to her.

She made it her business to stand up and feign an interest in the radio that covered the disaster in Kent. She didn't need to listen to it; she was in it. She shut it off casually and went and stood before the large bay windows behind the living room. Chris shifted on the couch. Kent was shrouded in the husky dark hues of dusk, and the exchange of fire in the distance lit the sky like fireworks as disappeared before hitting their mark. Sheva forced herself to smile.

"You know, I used to look out of this window and live vicariously though the people I used to know. I watched the city get segregated behind barbed wire and concrete walls, and structures fall into ruin. Tents erected, isolation starved my people, and somehow, hope swelled in the absence of things. I used to watch the children play with _plastic bottles_, and they were somehow happy, and I hated myself for being privileged. Idle. Every day they have only one choice. Praise God, or curse Him?"

She shivered when she felt Chris slide his hands up her arms and cup her shoulders. In her dreary reproach of her life as a spectator, he had risen and quietly joined her at the window. She welcomed his intrusion by gently resting her head against his chest, but he turned her to face him tenderly, forcing her to confront him.

Her beauty was bewitching, and the more he drank her in with his eyes the more disenchanted he became with Jill in his mind. He envisioned his hand on her face, passing his fingers over the delicate point of her nose, gliding the balls of his thumbs along the shapely curve of her enticing lips, the feathery batting of her eyelashes on his fingertips. Trying to resist her was like ignoring thirst. She screamed at him with the irresistible allure of a siren, making temptation seem infallibly divine.

He pressed his lips against hers, a gesture that took her wholly by surprise. He lingered against her, waiting, hoping for her to return the favor with equal fervor, but she was too stunned to react immediately. Chris was kissing her, and it could not be mistaken for an accidental brush of their lips, or a friendly gesture of comfort, no, there was a measure of intimacy in this, she was certain. And she welcomed it. He pulled her into him desperately, securing her in his arms, knitting his fingers in her hair, craving for the warmth of her bare flesh against his own. He wanted to devour her.

She glided her hands up his back, feeling his muscles tense pleasurably as her fingers slithered over him, feeling every arch and curve, every bulge of him flexing as his hands discovered her body. She felt him rising as their lips moved in obsessive want against one another. She guided his head away from her lips, allowing him only to shift his focus to her neck, her collar bone, her shoulders, nuzzling against her, pulling her skin gently with each breaking kiss. She was melting in his arms. What kind of lover would he be?

Mentally, she was as disconnected as if she was standing across the room. Could she ignore the backdrop of muffled gunfire? Cries of desperation? Maybe the sound of their lovemaking could deter her from her thoughts, and with ease. The music of his moaning set her alight with desire and a sensation that joined them at the hips where he was begging to be released from his denim prison. But could not a moment pass without a thought of Josh? Had she not loved him just days before? How could she submit to this in lieu of her still bleeding country? And yet, how could she deny herself this man, who had managed to grow more roots in her life every hectic moment she spent with him? She felt the dams of her eyes filling with tears she did not want to fall the instant his hands glided under her shirt.

Chris had managed to slow his lustful anticipation to a passionate crawl. He tasted her in every kiss, savored her every touch and made love to her a thousand times each time he gazed against her, strengthening his arousal to a painful want he could not ignore, burning in the pit of him, but he felt a hesitation in her body he also couldn't ignore. She tensed at the touch of his hand against her warm flesh, and when he finally started massaging her breast, her hand shot up over his in a mix of inviting, aggressive insistence to continue and disparaging plea to stop. He did not want to believe that Sheva did not want him either, but when he felt the moisture of her tears against his face, he knew that their moment had been irreparably dashed.

He eased away from her lips to look at her quizzically, stunned. "Sheva…"

She could not bear to look at him.

"Chris I'm—I'm so sorry!" She sobbed. The collage of emotions she was experiencing at that moment was too much. Lust—she wanted Chris to love her more than anything—guilt—to consider Josh when she was in his arms—shame—because she could not engage in this romance with him because of this guilt—hurt—because there truly was nothing left for her in this country and disappointment—because _she_ had nothing to offer Chris. There was no more she could do but wait for Chris to retreat from her arms and leave her in her depression but there was no such occurrence. The same fingers that knotted in her hair now dried her eyes; the same lips that massaged her own were whispering reassuring words that she barely heard, and the same arms that pulled her into his body feverishly now encircled her in a protective ring.

_Yes_, like any man he would have rather had her breathless adorations stifled under his bulk, squeezed between the vise of her legs to draw him in deeper into her own body, her fingers piecing into his skin because she didn't want him to retreat, to leave her because she _wanted_ him. The power of thought alone nearly felled him, but the sulking woman in his arms forced those thoughts to retreat. He would never abandon her because he too had been abandoned by a woman he reached into the abyss for, but when she took his hand, it was only to pull him in.

"I know." He mumbled into her ear. He smashed his eyes shut, scolding himself silently for acting on a whim. When she joined hands in the small of his lower back, he suddenly and willingly accepted his simultaneous role as comforter and sufferer, melting into her embrace, and while the kiss she blessed him with was purely thankful, he closed his eyes anyway, and savored it because it meant something.

* * *

"Chris?"

The room was surprisingly quiet. When she poked her head out from the bathroom door, the full sized bed in the centre of the room was empty. She could barely see the rumpled sheets beneath the layer of discarded clothes and scattered artifacts. She was alone. Boldness took her as she swept into the room like a gust of wind and went about turning on every available light and drawing tight the curtains to blind her to the obvious; the clock on the end table glowed eight nineteen. It was dark out, and the veil of panic would settle over her mind with crippling authority if she did not occupy herself.

She got dressed hastily and went about trying to organize the mess in the room. She and Chris together were a pair of locusts but while her things were lumped together, he left his things where he shed them. The bloodied and damp dress shirt he wore at Josh's funeral lay tangled in the similarly stained slacks. He would never wear them again. Leave it to Chris to find himself in trouble hours after landing in the country.

She started to fish out the belt from the loops of the pants but stopped mid task with a surrendered sigh and threw them down again.

"What the hell am I doing?" She mumbled.

Going through the motions were torturous. She loved Chris—she _knew_ she did. But in her quiet moments of reflection when she woke up to an empty space beside her, or now in this infinite silence, she admitted to herself that this love did not exist outside her mind. She searched her heart for him but he was no longer there, and worse still, his absence left no void to fill. He had been replaced by contempt for her experience with Wesker—a memory suppressed in the recesses of her fragile mind. Her memories were like driving through heavy rain; every pass of the windshield wipers only offered a glimpse of clarity into a turbulent past that stirred up enough pain to smother all of Chris' noble attempts at healing her. But she did not want Chris anymore. He had faded, she had recoiled and nothing existed between them but convenience and necessity.

The windows behind her rattled gently, reacting to the explosive violence just beyond her sight in Kent, but it wasn't until the lights flickered a warning that she actually _wanted_ him. Kent, like her relationship, was dying around her.


	5. Moving Forward

In the timeless moments fused together in front of a bay window framing distant scenes of devastation, Sheva did not want to retreat from this man. Buried in his embrace, nothing existed outside the entombment of his arms. He continued soothing her without words. He smoothed her hair away from her face, staring longingly at the brittle young woman in his arms, but he did not dare to lay down with her. He submitted to rest his chin on her shoulder, distancing himself from the reach of her lips, buried in the wisps of her dark hair, thankful that darkness hid her beauty, but even her silhouetted figure tempted him, so he closed his eyes to deny the privileges of sight. The eyes foster the development of lust. It wasn't what either of them needed.

Sheva could still feel his hands massaging her all over, the moisture of his kisses slowly dissolving into a memory. It was now that Sheva wanted to go to him and mend their lips once more. He had given her intimacy saved for lovers but being with Chris made no sense. A disagreement lay in her heart where Josh and the pleasure of her flesh could not coexist. Why bother with these emotions? Why entertain possibility? Nestled in the security of his arms, there was nothing else to do but imagine that the shades of conflicting emotions coursing through her were fleeting because at this point, she felt couldn't take another step without him. But as much as she hated to address it, there was one recurring thought that could not be ignored.

Jill. The significance of Jill grew and swelled in her mind like a balloon.

Chris pulled away slowly, still cradling her at her elbows. He wanted to apologize for barging his way into her life and putting her in any compromising positions; for being forceful, impulsive, and a little selfish because he didn't have a history with her deserving of the feelings that plagued him.

"I didn't mean for this to happen…" He began, searching for words.

Her gaze sank from his eyes. She eased out of his arms and turned away to dry her eyes with the back of her hands.

He tried to recover. "That's not what I meant…"

"I know. It's alright." She submitted softly. "You've done more than enough. I'm sorry if I've jeopardized anything for you." She turned away to collect herself. Her composure consisted of a feigned, unconvincing smile. Her implication forced him to consider who she alluded to. _Jill._ The name struck him like a blow, as if he just remembered she even existed. Now, the name stabbed him with a guilt that rushed upon him as suddenly as the realization itself. In an instant, he had become the type of man he never intended to be. The fault he shared with Sheva suddenly drove them apart to the distance of strangers. A long pause accompanied them where in that time they could barely glance at one another without battling an attraction that did not quell even after acknowledging their disloyalty.

Sheva spoke first, shattering the awkward silence. "I understand if you have to leave."

Chris nodded absently, reluctantly turning towards the door. He did not want to leave her but he did not resist the suggestion hidden in her statement. "You'll be okay by yourself?"

"I think so."

"You sure?"

It was her turn to nod. She absolutely refused to look at him. Not now. Not knowingly accepting what transpired between them was wrong. It was difficult to ignore her feelings and push him away. His lips had stained her skin.

"Sheva, I'm sorry," He blurted.

She didn't care to deal with this now. She dismissed it casually with a wave of her hand. "It's ok, Josh."

What? Chris balked at her faux par, her Freudian slip that she didn't seem to realize she had made. Did she just call him Josh? The mistake pricked him. It made him weary of the authenticity of what they had shared and it made him shamefully, unjustifiably, resentful. Josh? He felt his face warming with the unintentional affront.

So many questions burned through his skull he could hardly separate them into single sentences. Did she just call me Josh? Did she want him instead? Was she thinking of him the whole time? _Ask her._ The desire to know was compelling, but when she looked at him, her soft and brittle features revealed her ignorance and he could not bear to hurt her by revealing her mistake.

"If you need me, you know where I am." His voice was surprisingly unaffected by the dull ache inside of him. He turned to let himself out of the apartment with Sheva's heart leaping after him. The pulls of conviction lead him outside, where he shut the door softly behind him and closed out the only woman who could reciprocate his feelings.

It was not until he stood in the bustling swallows of the second story corridor that he realized his timeless moments with Sheva were not shared by Kent. The confusion had finally spilled over into the BSAA compound where for the first time since earlier in the evening the turrets were silent, the guard posts were largely abandoned and the guard towers flashed a silent message of emergency. Unit doors were sprung open carelessly; scattered belongings were strewn about the walkway trailing a hasty departure. He rushed to the railing and looked down. West African BSAA were ushering tenants through the courtyard, barking foreign orders to a panicked society of agents, suddenly uprooted and forced to leave the compound in a mandatory evacuation.

Immediately his mind went to Jill. He started for the stairs but stopped abruptly to glance back at Sheva's door, torn. For the first time he was rooted in place, indecisive and equally compelled to either woman. His mind swirled with the mishap with Sheva that ultimately served as the decisive factor to push him toward Jill. Though his legs carried him one way his heart went another.

* * *

When Chris pushed open their room door, he was hardly surprised to see Jill, tightly wound and mentally disarrayed, flying to and fro about the room, hastily tossing their things into a sprawling suitcase on the floor. She stopped short in front of him with an armful of unfolded clothes and greeted him with a question.

"Where have you been?" It was rhetorical though he intended to answer her. She dropped the armful into the luggage and hoisted the over flowing bag onto the bed. "We have an hour to get downstairs if we want to leave this country tonight and I can't find my passport."

Chris was a somnambulist, detached from the mania inspired by this sudden evacuation, an evacuation Jill was only too ready to accept, sensibly so, and of course, the demands of packing had stolen the show from Chris' sullen, lackluster interest in the goings on. Jill only saw through him. She lifted herself onto the suitcase and gestured for him to zip it closed.

Obediently, he knelt in front of her and took the zip between his trembling thumb and forefinger, compressed by a conscience that seemed to gain weight exponentially in her presence. Part of him was still loyal to her.

"I was with Sheva." He said flatly, trying to drag the zipper around the corner without catching her fingers. It suddenly weighed a ton. Jill furrowed her brow. So what? It wouldn't have been worth the mention had he not withdrawn, lingering with the zip in his fingers and his eyes averted. Every bit of him reeked with suspicion. It occurred to her that the first words he spoke to her since entering the room were an admission.

"What do you mean, you were _with Sheva_?"

Chris tensed, abandoning his task as zipper and mustered the courage to meet the eyes that were fixed on him like a sniper. His silence implied a liaison that never occurred but he couldn't find the words to explain himself. He had gone dumb, intimidated by the folded arms and pursed lips of his interrogator, bearing down on him with the authority of a scorned lover. A flash of hate surface behind her eyes but passed in a blink and now the two stared at one another as if patiently waiting to counter strike. In those moments she measured the weight of his pitiable display, accepting it as genuine, and decided her next action was at the very least merciful considering what she could have done with his vulnerability.

Chris never saw the hand that leapt across his face. He had been deservingly branded with a slap that sent heat travelling across his face and him stumbling off his haunches.

"Never. Never would I have done something like this to you."

She popped up and tried to close the bag herself, but was too frustrated to articulate the tiny zippers. She wanted scream. Chris had blindsided her with a silent confession. Slapping him somehow seemed a satisfying equalizer. He had embarrassed her, severed their trust and mocked their struggling relationship and all she could think about was her missing passport. What was wrong with her? His infidelity was an annoyance at best. She started pulling open the drawers in the nightstand to search through blurry eyes.

"Jill." Chris started, rising off the floor and finding the courage at last to speak.

She barely looked over her shoulder at him. The drawer slammed shut.

"Just say it." He sat himself on the edge of the bed massaging his stinging face.

She breezed past him to the other side of the bed to rummage through the bureau. "For _what, _Chris? To absolve you from your sin? To alleviate your guilt?" She snapped, catching the tears that fell before he had a chance to see them. She was proud of herself for maintaining her cutting sarcasm, but she knew he only wanted her to make her own admission. How dare him. As if he deserved reciprocity.

"Yes," he whispered softly. "I wouldn't have believed anyone in a million years if they told me that I would come to Africa and…and…" He stammered, struggling for words that didn't yet exist to explain how he felt about Sheva. He fell silent. He leaned down between his feet and picked up the passport she was searching for.

Jill faced the wall, arms folded across her chest defiantly, refusing to address her own feelings. In a way, she was glad for Chris' infidelity to set into motion a break-up she didn't have the courage to initiate. Another part of her was frightened to death of being alone. She had forgotten how to be independent, how to cope, how to live without feigning emotions. Redundancy was her prison and her own feelings of insecurity a sort of warden. Letting go of Chris would be medicinal for the both of them.

She felt him stop short just behind her. "I may be a fool for pressing the issue but I have to know if I've been wrong about you?" He sounded so sheepish despite the boldness of his persistence. He knew the answer already but he could not willingly leave her. She had to push him away. She turned to face him finally, forced into a confrontation she avoided for too long.

"I'm sorry I hit you." She was. She tried to soothe his reddened cheek by stroking it apologetically, a gesture he appreciated although he deserved her discipline. He nodded, pretending not to notice her eyes glistening despite how she avoided looking at him to spare his own shame. He took her face gently and guided it toward him. They had been through too much to hide from each other now.

"Just tell me, Jill."

She nearly choked on her own words, but it needed to be said. "I don't love you anymore."

Jill felt her captive spirit take flight with the admission. It was as if she had been holding her breath for months. The confession was an immediate relief, though it seemed to crush Chris despite him bracing for the impact of those words. She watched his expression morph into defeat.

His personal life had existed as flimsy parchment in Jill's hands, and she had just torn it asunder, abolishing any ties he may have had to her out of guilt, or duty as a lover. He was liberated, absolved, but he couldn't feel past the lashing sting of rejection. When did they devolve into this? If they couldn't be lovers could they at least be friends? Partners?

He felt her sliding the passport out from his very loose grip and ease past him. The cage door was open, but he couldn't fly out. Breaking up with Jill only dissolved his title and status but it did nothing to deaden the emotions and experiences built around eleven years with someone, even if she had only existed as a memory for three years. In some form, he would always care for her, but they had been so surely finishing for months that this inevitable break up didn't come soon enough, nor did it feel especially damaging the longer he stood there like a dolt, staring at the empty space where she was a moment before.

He may have replied to her, he didn't know, but when he flopped back onto the bed he was only semiconscious. There was no excuse, no logic associated with the immediate path his mind had taken now. Despite how his face still burned with the assault and how confused he felt about his breakup with Jill, ignoring the demands of an active evacuation and the peril in Kent, he was possessed by one thought alone: Sheva. He would not leave this country without her.

* * *

Sheva stood by chewing on her bottom lip, politely declining any invitations to help. Her hands were busy; wringing together, knotted behind her back, or rubbing her arms to comfort herself. Anything to keep from lunging at the casket of Josh Stone. When she made it back to the church she expected maybe only a minute alone, but her expectations were dashed the moment she pushed open the double doors and saw the small fleet of men lifting the casket onto their shoulders. Kent wasn't even safe for the deceased. Its last hope was being air lifted to rest in peace where there were no stains of Umbrella or Uroboros. Perhaps he was the lucky one.

She gravitated toward the casket with an uncontainable attraction, pretending not to take insult to its hasty handling; it sloped dangerously favoring a forward dip until one of the men shifted to support the front. The way they were groaning and straining proved it too heavy to handle with the manpower they had, and with some frustration and insensitivity, the West African flag draping over the casket was flung to the floor to be trampled underfoot.

Kent was to go the way of Raccoon City before dawn and here she was, developing a sense of patriotism rising from a mix of pity and guilt. The mishandling of Josh's body compelled a silent protest from her; she reached forward and gently settled her hand against the hardwood of the casket as it passed, transmitting her final goodbyes and apologies to a man who would never know how much she cared for him and how sorry she was that Chris was filling a void she always thought was in the shape of him.

By dawn, Kent and its remaining citizens would be bathed in ashes.


	6. The Horror of Survival

Chris followed behind Jill reluctantly, reflecting on his break up that was too fresh for him to ignore the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was exhausted mentally and emotionally, and the toll of this truth was evident in his hangdog expression, painted red and orange by flashing emergency lights. Soldiers whisked by him in a rush, shadows crept by without ownership, and a jumble of languages scrambled around him but all he could hear was the rolling wheels on Jill's luggage just ahead, being pulled with a haste he could not match.

Jill in truth had been deliberately trying to outpace him since leaving the room. But the faster she walked the more resentment she seemed to burn off. Yes, Chris had betrayed what was left of them. He deserved every slap, every cold shoulder, every staggering look of disgust she could muster but resenting a man she no longer loved seemed foolish. Her admission seemed to wound him gravely. Yet, she was not without fault. She was parasitic for longer than she would like to admit, and the sullen, dragging, pitiable man lagging behind her had been created by her own doing. The load of conscience now rested on her shoulders, slowing her haste the more she thought of her own sin. Pity now, was suddenly smothering her.

By the time they had made it out onto the helipad in the rear of the compound, a distress copter was taking off with its first passengers into the cloudy evening sky, tainted by the smoke from the smoldering blazes in Kent. In an hour they will be at an airport in the southernmost province of Kijuju, ready to fly back to the United States, leaving behind Josh, Sheva, perilous Kent, and the corpse of their relationship. Jill, with reasonable guilt, hoisted herself into the helicopter without the aid of the attending soldier and stared aimlessly ahead, consumed by her own conscience. Chris climbed in beside her reluctantly, overly conscious to mind his sprawl least their knees touch.

Before the door had a chance to roll shut, Chris lurched out of his seat and stopped it with his hand, much to the surprise of the soldier on the ground. He wasn't quite ready to leave.

"Mr. Redfield?"

"Do you know if agent Alomar has made it into any of the rescue copters out of Kent, yet?" In his desperation to know, his question surged out like a singular word.

The soldier replied only with action, radioing in to pilots that had already flown out with a collected voice but his trembling hands gave away his true countenance. If he is not flown out of the compound by dawn he'd be counted amongst the lost. Of this he was quite conscience.

After a few minutes, his reply was cryptic. "Negative. Miss Alomar was last seen entering into Kent from the main."

Sheva, the martyr, the rising voice of her people, had gone into Kent. He didn't know why it surprised him to hear those damning words. She had been in a constant state of anguish and empathy for her dying country since he landed. He had heard her lament over its state in a soliloquy he interrupted with his lust for her back in her apartment. So why did his blood curdle hearing this very obvious statement now?

Dazed, decided, selfless, he stepped from the helicopter just as the blades began to rotate, much to the surprise of the other BSAA passengers and namely Jill, who in a moment of panic herself, reached out a hand to stop him but he slid from her fingertips like a ghost. In his determination, he had never felt her touch.

Sheva stood before the dividing fence and lifted her hand to cover her open mouth. She wanted to throw up or cry or both. The fence had been meshed with distorted bodies of desperate Kentians, piled atop one another in death, all failed at breeching the links. Those that made it to the barbed wire slumped in its tangled web, draining onto the sands, groaning until spiritual release. The fence bowed dangerously and pushed out at the bottom, but the hands that clenched BSAA soil were frozen in death. Posts were abandoned without consequence; she was the only thing alive out there.

When she mustered enough pluck to enter Kent through the main gates, her intentions were to head only into the tented city to lead any survivors to bus rescue only few stumbled upon by grace alone on the other side of the river. But as darkness enveloped her, the whispering wind gave way to silence and the only assurance of life was her own, jogging through a ghost town with an MP slung over her shoulder and a gun belt hugging her hips. The white Red Cross tent up ahead had her sprinting like a gazelle. If anyone should be alive and debilitated, it would be in the medical camps.

She stopped short outside the tent flaps and held her breath. The smell of the sick was distinctive and poignantly odoriferous, and she did not want to be greeted immediately this way as she gingerly parted the heavy plastic flaps with the barrel of her handgun. She entered cautiously, greeted by nothing but rising flies she could not see in this darkness. She turned on the light on the end of her gun and moved silently through the rows of empty gurneys and beds, stained and fallen over in an evident scramble. Bags of IVs dripped into the moist dirt and monitors hummed and beeped warnings that no one would hear. A wave of peace came over her when she realized that no one had been left behind.

"Thank God," she muttered, finally releasing her breath. A bead of sweat rolled off of her face. She turned abruptly, indexing the gun when a shuffle from the corner drew her attention. She lifted the weapon and slowly slid her index finger into the trigger guard, making her way through the puzzle of hospital beds with her heart leaping out of her chest. The light from the gun bounded about ahead of her in a quick search. This time, she didn't know she was holding her breath.

The gurney in the farthest corner was occupied, and a figure lay half-covered atop its matted sheets, head twisted away from her.

"Hello?" No response. She pressed forward, trying again her native tongue for a favourable response. Still, the figure did not call out to her. When she got close enough to the bed, she shot out a hand and rattled it quickly, only to bring back her supporting hand to the butt of the gun. When still she was not greeted, she sighed heavily and dropped her gun to her side.

"Dead." She whispered, placing a regrettable hand where the figure's feet were tangled beneath the sheets. Her touch forced the still figure to bolt upright with a groan, an explosive move that Sheva greeted with a well placed bullet through the skull, forcing the now lifeless body to drop back onto the bed like a brick and painting her in a splatter of blood. The two seconds it took to drop the supposed hostile had her trembling like a leaf, still poised and still frightened. She had just shot a man and she wasn't sure if he was majini or not, and the possibility of the latter seemed very probable to her as the remnants of the man cruised off her disrupted features in droplets of blood and sweat.

"Oh my God…"

The gunfire must have attracted the attention of lurking majini because before she had a chance to compose herself, a pair of hands came reaching through the plastic flaps at her and she was reacting violently, trading handgun for MP and firing blindly into the night.

Outfitting himself in BSAA issued gear met Chris with little resistance. Shrugging off questions of its necessity met him with troublesome looks. Finding a breech in the fence that wasn't littered with leaking bodies was impossible, so the most sensible thing for him to do was meet with the rescue team on the other side of the river, TerraSave, to see if Sheva had pulled out with a bus of refugees already. He was surprised to see the turn out, and impressed by the valiance of the workers standing in chest high waters with ropes to form a makeshift bridge for the survivors, young and old, to cross. But there was no Sheva.

At present he was moving through what was left of Kent like a shadow, knowing full well the majini had disbursed into the city like rabid dogs, and the further he parted from TerraSave, the more he felt like an encounter was pending. But he only wanted to find Sheva before the fear for his own safety was too great and he had to turn back. He glanced down at his wrist watch to remind him of the time, and touched the earpiece he was wearing to signal Sheva, whom he hoped was sane enough to be wearing one.

His voice was barely a whisper when he called to her, eyes alert and darting about. He didn't want any unnecessary attention.

"Sheva."

Only the static of silence came back to him. The earpiece had an impressive radius and if she was anywhere near him he would pick up her signal. If only it was on. He glanced around the corner and darted across the street, dragging the sniper rifle at his side. Behind him was the river and TerraSave, to the right lay hopelessness and burning destruction, so if he travelled northeast, he prayed, Sheva would be amongst the living.

He stopped behind a donkey cart, empty and deserted to listen. It seemed he was alone in this ghost town, but the shadows that played around him were only waiting to stumble upon him.

"Sheva?" He whispered, mopping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "Sheva Alomar. This is Chris Redfield. If you can hear me at all, _please_ answer." Nothing. "God damn it." A single shot in the distance stole his attention and sparked hope.

He left his position and pressed further still toward the northeast with a quickened pace, his fingers practically jammed into the earpiece. Shuffling, yes, he was certain he could hear shuffling. Shuffling and ragged breathing. He had picked up on someone's signal.

"Sheva. Sheva….Sheva!" He chanted, forgetting to keep silent. Relief flooded into him the moment her desperate voice returned with his own name. "Chris?" She was running.

"Yeah, it's me, tell me where you are!" He demanded, for the first time rising to his feet to scope his surroundings. He pulled out his handgun from his holster, ready to dismiss confrontation with several well-aimed shots. The ripe, full moon overhead was his only lantern and a celestial assistance he was thankful for.

"I-I dunno." Her static-filled response was interrupted with a deafening blast of gunfire that overrode everything Chris tried to transmit to her.

"Keep talking," he instructed, looking for anything he could climb onto for a vantage point. The tin roofs of a few structures looked stable enough to hold his weight, and with a boost from a nearby tire pile he hoisted himself up top, ignoring how the rusty metal forced into his hands. He turned about frantically, squinting through the dark for the orange burst of gunfire that would tell him where she was.

"Give me some kind of signal…" He dared to leap onto another roof, following only the distant sounds of gunfire. The way she was blasting she'd be out of ammunition soon.

Sheva was inside a medical tent—which she didn't know. She had a run-in with a sizable group of majini that seemed to materialize at every turn. While she had managed to escape the first tent, there was little time to plan an exit with such an audience as she had alerted and now, hearing Chris's voice was angelic. But he wanted a signal. She emptied out her handgun into the body of the majini in front of her and reloaded before the last bullet had exited the chamber. The curse of being a left- handed shooter left her feeling the burn from ejected shells from the MP.

Quickly, she darted into another tent and rummaged through the medical supplies for a bottle of rubbing alcohol which she quickly turned into a Molotov and launched the smoldering projectile onto the tent.

"Fire, by the medical tents! Can you see it?" She asked, taking the time to fumble along her utility belt for MP rounds.

Chris passed his eyes over the structures in the distance. It was too dark to see smoke.

"No…wait, yes. I see it. Where are you?" He dropped down onto one knee and braced the sniper up against his shoulder. Looking through the scope with night vision at the blaze nearly blinded him. He zoomed out and made a quick scan for her. She shot past his crosshairs with a majini but a pace behind her.

"I see you, Sheva, get rid of him and head back to the crates you just passed."

She did as she was told and reluctantly made her way back to the crates. There was a group of rotting majini heading toward her much to her chagrin, but it didn't take her long to realize that Chris was sniping from some unseen distance. Body after body dropped in front of her to her relief. When the last one fell, she sighed thankfully and sank to the sands to rest herself.

"Chris…" she huffed. "Hurry."

Satisfied, Chris nodded. "Be easy. I'm coming for you." He ended the transmission with this promise, rising up from his position to greet a group of majini on the roof with him, much to his surprise. He went for his handgun but a grab from behind drew his attention to the arm around his neck and the rotted teeth hissing into his ear. In a flash, they had cluttered around him, tearing at him, dragging off his rifle and wrestling him to the roof. He hip tossed the offender into the group and threw a haymaker into the first face in front of him. His fist sank into the brittle flesh and bones with ease, but he shook off the debris and shoved away the closing numbers with his rifle to clear enough space for him to jump onto the nearest roof.

He landed into a roll and righted himself immediately. "Sheva, trouble. I'm coming to you, though, stay put." He picked himself up and jogged a few paces back to give himself enough speed to leap onto the next roof, a good distance away. When he pushed off from the roof he was certain he would make it, but when he landed, the tin gave way beneath his weight and he crashed through into the darkness of the next building in a collage of splintered metal, dust and debris, somehow finding himself laying atop his gun which was firing off with a mind of its own every which way.

Sheva, only an auditory witness, popped up in a panic. "Chris!" The fear she had only momentarily subdued returned in a rush as she stood idly by, uncertain as to where he was, and the only assurance that he had not died immediately in the terrible crash was his ragged and pained breathing, which subsided into a wheezing moan, a raspy breath, then finally, silence.


	7. Camaraderie

The solidity of the tin roof was deceptive; neglect and corrosion had all been masked by the night. There wasn't a single spot on the roof that would have supported Chris' weight. He did not realize this until he was plunging through the ceiling blindly, grasping for any support to no avail. He hit a hard surface with enough force to push the air out of him. Whatever he hit promptly bounded him off onto the floor finally, where he managed to set his gun off in a 3-shot burst just at his hips.

Had he shot himself? His skull was on fire. The last thing he needed was to be debilitated in a dark shed with majini on his trail. He had to get up fast. When his double vision merged he tried to make sense of his surroundings. He was flat on his back with his arms jutting out to his sides and his feet sticking straight out. The gaping hole above him shined in a glimmer of the moon, casting questionable shadows along the walls.

He shot up a hand to his earpiece to see if Sheva was still on the line. "Sheva? Still there?" He moaned. Silence. He yanked the apparatus from his face to discover that it had been irreparably damaged in the fall.

His pulse began racing the moment he was certain that the shuffling outside meant that his hideaway had been discovered. It wasn't long before their otherworldly garble surrounded the structure, plotting, instructing and organizing a way into the room. Fists pounded on the weak walls, hands dragged along the outside, searching for a way in. He felt like a sitting duck. The rifle was lost in the dark, he was severed from any communication and in a moment he would be swallowed up in this room by the swarming majini raging against the walls outside. He tried to sit up with a strain but he was suddenly very aware of his own weight when his body resisted his will. His ring and little fingers on his left hand had gone numb, his legs dragged like bags of sand and his head was still vibrating. His non responsive legs sent a panic coursing through his blood. The fall must have been more damaging than he imagined.

"Oh, no…" He groaned, latching onto his pant legs and trying to sit himself up. He flopped back onto the ground in pain, exhausted from the struggle and flagged his arms about looking for anything to latch on to. He made a connection with a steel bar running from the ground up and traced its corroded surface up until he met the smooth, perpendicular face of the wood it was connected to. It was a table. A table he could slide himself underneath. He sat up on his elbows with his teeth grinding together and dragged his dead weight beneath the table desperately. He pulled the handgun out from its position at his hip and settled it gently on his chest, reaching down another hand to feel for the knife he had clipped onto his belt loop. Ready as he could be, he tried to quiet himself amidst the rattling door which he now knew to be at his feet. There he waited for the confrontation he would inevitably lose.

The door burst open and banged against the inside wall, allowing a sliver of light to fall into the room. He held his breath and inched his legs away from this spotlight, counting the pairs of feet that clamored into the room. A search ensued. Things came crashing down around him, feet shuffled frantically about and hissing Swahili exchanged between majini. His heart was leaping out of his chest but he was too afraid to let go his breath least they discover his hideout. A chair slid away from the table and collided with something. Chris turned his head toward the noise, waiting for a face to show up and meet the business end of his gun. He was thankfully disappointed. Only slightly relieved, he turned his head to stare at the underside of the table when a hand shot out and gripped his arm.

The breath he was holding burst out in a bellow, and he in turn gripped the offending arm and dragged the majini onto the gun where it jerked with the unnecessary rain of bullets fired into its body before slumping over dead beside him. He was immediately swarmed with grabbing arms, scraping fingernails and assaulting kicks that he met with well- timed shots. He couldn't react fast enough. Then, the slide on his handgun fell forward all too soon, responding to his futile trigger pulls with disquieting clicks.

"Shit!"

Battling with a few hands before attempting to reload his weapon only allowed for him to be overpowered and dragged out from under the table. He immediately went for his knife, slashing blindly with the furor of a desperate man. All the formality of his CQC training in the military had been rendered useless. By the agonizing scream that came back to him, he knew he had fatally pierced one of them. The knife jammed, refusing to release from the body of the majini, and his hand came back to him on the backswing empty.

"Get off!" He started smashing the butt of his empty gun into nearby skulls, hands and feet. He willed his legs to come up; a great effort to which they obliged, and with his might he pushed away the body trying to mount him. Immediately he was winded and cocooned in pain when his legs flopped back onto the ground. A pair of hands gripped his shoulders, trying to force him to lay flat. The face in front of him split apart from invisible fissures for a quartet of tentacles to wave in front of him. He wrapped his hands around the wrists and tried to resist being sucked into the gaping maw but he could feel his muscles trembling with fatigue.

A flood of bright light joined them in the room. The majini shifted their attention to the intruder. A barrage of bullets fired off, ripping through every standing body like paper. Chris covered his ears to lessen the assault on senses, smashing his eyes shut from the rain of plaster that dusted over him. In seconds there wasn't a soul left standing. As the dust settled the welcomed intruder ran over to him and stooped low to examine what was left of him. He squinted through the beam expecting to see Sheva's face.

Jill shined the light from her machine gun away from Chris and reached out a hand to touch him gingerly.

"Are you ok?" She asked, passing her hands over him to search for broken bones or entry wounds.

"Jill!" He exclaimed, taking her by the arms. He didn't even know what to say to her. "Jill!" He repeated, pulling her into his arms. She went into him without resistance, glad to have found him alive. It was the first genuine contact they had shared in a long time.

He pulled away first, trying to prop himself against the wall. "How did you find me?"

She smiled and tapped her earpiece. "I heard every word." She took her eyes out of his and set to reloading his handgun, which she thrust into his arms. Jill didn't like delay. She got up and anchored her foot on the body that lay next to Chris and yanked out his combat knife. She held it out to him after wiping the stains off on her pant leg.

Chris, still taken aback by his unprecedented rescue, took the knife from her hand and sheathed it. "Why didn't you say anything?" He asked, dragging his legs out from under the body strewn about his lap.

She looked down at him tenderly, a difficult smirk flashing across her face. "I didn't want to interrupt you two," She admitted. The way she kept breaking eye contact with him made it evident that his infidelity had not been forgotten, but her unwillingness to interject herself despite the circumstance was her veiled blessing.

Chris fell silent. Seeing her like this threw him back into a chasm of guilt. He never even offered an apology for her to reject. In the silence that fell between them, they shared a silent conversation. The room was palatable with tension, but Jill refocused on the situation at hand.

"Are you ok?" She asked again.

Chris couldn't stop staring at her. He had missed his opportunity to make peace between them. This amnesty was feigned, but there was no time to repair their tainted relationship. He dropped his gaze to his legs and started to massage the pins and needles from his fingers.

"Yeah…Give me a minute."

"What time is it?"

He lit the face of his watch, surprised at the time that had elapsed since he'd left the rescue on the other side of the river. "Four thirty."

Jill balked. "Then we haven't got a minute."

Chris braced a palm against the wall and forced his feet to tuck under him. The struggle to stand went unassisted but once he rose up he arched his back and stretched out his cramping muscles, ignoring every burning sensation radiating out from his spine. He would never reveal how much pain he was in. Jill would never admit that she was already aware. Still, she would look to him for his instruction.

"Are you ready?" He asked, knitting his brows together.

"Roger," she returned. He gestured for the door with his head for her to lead them out, which she swiftly obeyed, while he trudged out behind her, determined.

"Chris?" Her voice had lost its anticipation. The hope of a response quelled the moment the line went dead. What did he mean by "trouble"? Why didn't he respond? What had happened to him? Waiting for him to show up now made little sense to her. The choking smoke from the fire she had created was stifling her and standing around would mean asphyxiation. Now _she_ had to find him. If he had come in from the main gates he would have been behind her. She started off in the direction she had come, trying to follow the soft beam from the light affixed to the MP. She covered her nose and mouth with the collar of her top and ran through watering eyes.

_Think_, Sheva, she scolded herself. If he was sniping he needed a vantage point, and with all the destruction by the gates earlier in the day, there wasn't a structure standing that would allow for that. And he couldn't have come in from the north. It wasn't practical. She stopped dead in her tracks and made an abrupt turn toward the river. She had put a great distance between her and the fire before falling into another confrontation with any majini. In her desperation to find Chris before Kent was baptized in fire, she shot in haste and avoided conflict by making herself scarce. At one point, she was certain she had heard her name in the earpiece, but it was a woman's voice. Though it sounded vaguely familiar, she had already regarded it as a desperate hallucination.

The road up ahead divided tent city from the poor housing settlements; ramshackle tin and wood formed harlequin single family units, now abandoned by the living, and the only residents left behind were either dead, or morphing into the many majini dotting the road in front of her.

"Damn…" she uttered softly, switching off her flashlight. There was no way she could get across without drawing attention to herself.

"Wait!" This time, she was certain that she had heard a voice. The whisper was harsh; a suppressed shout for attention but it was there. And it was definitely female. She knitted her brows and touched the earpiece to respond when a dark figure stepped in front of her. The majini was staggering but unaware and when she lifted her gun to react, she thought better of it and settled it to her side again. The tent she was stooping next to was loose on the bottom, so she lifted it carefully and rolled underneath.

Privacy. She didn't dare to turn on the light again but a quick glace around confirmed it was another medical tent.

"Who is this?" She whispered, eyes peeled. She cut transmission before waiting for a return. The main entrance to the tent had just flapped open, that she was certain. She could not see where her company had gone, but for certain she was no longer alone, and this was evidenced by the heavy, dragging footsteps of one and the wispy pattering of another. She crouched down low in the cover of darkness and felt her way along for cover. She ran smack into a rolling gurney that did nothing to aid her covert attempts. Quickly, she dove behind it and crouched, ready to greet the nearing footsteps.

Anxiety met her there, slightly cowering, her heart thudding out of her chest and the gun sliding from her sweaty palms. The MP needed to be reloaded and she didn't know how many rounds she had left in the handgun but she would finish them all in the approaching majini. The moment it was near enough for her to see two pairs of legs sanding on the other side of the gurney, she popped up and launched an explosive kick, sending the rolling bed into the body of one, buying her a minute to take aim at the other.

"Sheva!" The shadow barked, guiding her offensive hand away. The gun cracked off just beside him. It was Chris. She could barely see his ghastly expression, unnerved by a narrowly avoided death by her hand. Her face morphed into an apology Chris could not read, a sentiment he would understand if only he could see her crumbling features. Her lips trembled to apologize, to say anything, to even meet his there in the dark however awkward it would be. Chris, his eyes wide like saucers, couldn't even have imagined what had just happened. Sheva almost blew his head off. She stumbled forward, unable to contain herself, and forced herself into his arms. He embraced her tightly, thankfully, a sensation of both pleasure and pain engulfing him as her arms compressed his body.

Jill shined the light away from them to allow them some privacy, but by the time the beam made it to the floor she was glad the darkness hid her own horror. The threads of her composure had unraveled some, unbeknownst to her company. It had been unraveling since she stepped into Kent. In addition, hearing their whispered affections there in the dark made her feel intrusive.

"I came looking for you…" Sheva whispered, feeling his stubble grazing against her palms. He was sweaty, gritty, breathing heavily there in the dark, inches away from her, feeling her delicate skin moist underneath his fingertips.

"I'm alright," he soothed. "Jill is with us."

With this introduction, the light lifted again and framed them entwined in one another's arms. Chris backed out of her arms and joined Jill at her side again. Sheva nodded a hello at Jill which she returned with a playful wink, dashing any concerns she may have had about how Jill felt about her.

"Do you need any ammunition?" Jill asked, stepping toward her with an offering of handgun rounds. The exchange was dimly lit and for a moment only the sounds of reloading and heavy exhales accompanied them in the medical tent. If there was any discomfort it was not known. Jill had tendencies to delve herself into tasks at hand; Chris was silently consumed with the safety of his two partners, for now ignoring his own needs; Sheva responded only to situations presented. Their necessity to leave Kent put aside any grievances they may have had. Before long the trio of agents were back to back, circling out of the medical tent. The light from their weapons would draw unwanted attention, and soon.

"Should we go back to the BSAA compound?" Sheva asked.

"Negative. It's evacuated by now," Chris answered.

"We're going back to TerraSave," Jill said decisively, trying to force a voice through her closing throat. "I'm expecting rescue."

The "Roger," she got back was in unison. Jill always planned ahead. She was resourceful, sharp and focused. Her mind was always clear on missions and where Chris lacked in strategy and patience, she excelled, thinking for the both of them without meeting resistance. Tonight, she was thankful that their strategy involved pointing and shooting, because her hands trembled uncontrollably, an anxiety she masked by holding the gun tighter to her body. The night, an unmerciful darkness like Wesker's embrace, was drawing away her calm resolve. In truth, she never interrupted Chris and Sheva because all they would have heard was her erratic breathing and racing footsteps. Her concern for Chris guided her through Kent as though he were a beacon of light, smothering her fears for the moment and forcing them back into the nooks of her conscious mind. Now, it was creeping back into her awareness.

The mask of calm was crumbling. Holding the gun to her body didn't help anymore. Her legs were like Jell-o. Air wasn't getting sucked into her lungs fast enough. She was leaning up against Chris's back, feeling his body reel into hers every time he pulled the trigger. Every face looked familiar. She had infected half of this country herself. She was facing down her own hell all over again.

Chris turned abruptly when he felt Jill sliding down his back. He managed to catch her mid plummet, guiding her down to the ground easily.

"Sheva, cover us!" He ordered, trying to rouse Jill. She had retreated into herself suddenly. A blind stare and heavy breathing accompanied her shriveled posture, victim to a panic attack. He gathered her up in his arms and shook her, but her eyes rolled past him, gazing into a not so distant past and disregarding a very tense present where the reach of death neared them every passing second. Chris' concerned face shouted at her deaf ears but he soon drifted away just as surrealistic as any dream could offer her, only with a sudden serenity she could never hope to have in her consciousness.


	8. Requiem for Kijuju

Jill's mental departure was so sudden and absolute, by the time Chris glided her to the ground her trance was so involved it seemed she was never truly awake. Behind her lids fluttered with activity, her features pallid, hands limp and cold grazing against the sands beneath them. Sheva ceased fire and joined Chris in hovering over her, concern drawing together her expression.

"Jill…" She did not bother to say her name above a whisper because a shriek would have had the same null effect. Chris shared a concerned glace with her. They didn't have time for this.

He slid the machine gun from Jill's entangled fingertips and handed it to Sheva. In his mind, he was screaming for her to get up. Maybe he was talking to Jill or a God he seemed to seldom have time for but Jill needed to get up, either on her own accord or by some divine intervention. He slipped his arm under her neck to support her head. She wasn't going to get up.

He didn't have to look at Sheva to know she was waiting for instruction or guidance, neither of which he could offer her. There was no planning for a decision as simple as the one they had to make. Attempt to survive, or succumb. Above, the faint beating of helicopter blades stole their attention from the catatonic Jill. Chris immediately sprang to life at the prospect of a late rescue. He couldn't remember a time he _hadn't_ been pulled from the mouth of the lion by some astonishing liberation.

"Sheva, keep the path clear." He nodded off toward the direction of the landing chopper. He slid Jill's arm around his neck and scooped her under the knees, lifting her to his chest with an ease as if the flaccid body in his arms was indeed made of rags.

"Roger." She acknowledged, running ahead. Sheva followed instruction and committed to any task with the tenacity of a gladiator. She carried on in Kijuju on their first mission together as if she was indestructible and in fact, it seemed she had been. Her sex negated her valance, her beauty understated her ability, and that made her dangerous. To the secure and strong willed man carrying Jill, it made her wildly valuable, and undeniably sexy. She was indeed an amazing woman, and he would tell her this when the opportunity presented itself.

He dropped his eyes to Jill, nesting against him, marring his already gauche jog. Half his mind was with her. The other half was consumed with situational awareness. Though they had paused a moment to address Jill, he had always been aware of the distance, speed and potential threat of not so far off majini. How his mind pulled in so many directions without giving he could not know. He held Jill a little tighter, and found himself pressing his face into her neck to reassure him that she was still with him. Her pulse was still strong, her breathing was still steady but _Jill_ was gone.

Sheva glanced back over her shoulder at Chris' grainy shadow galloping along at a distance behind her with Jill's limbs flagging about. She could not tell him that the handgun was out of ammunition and that somehow, stupidly, she managed to discard her own MP. She would never admit to herself that she was exhausted. Moving through the moonlit darkness of Kent, the only cloak that blessed them cursed them also; the disturbed sands from the low flying helicopter provided a thankful cover, but resisted the light from her flashlight. It was like shining it against a wall. Chris' occasional coughing comforted her, but the distorted labguage from unseen majini passed through her like waves of nausea. They may have been close enough to touch her, but she would never know. Every once in a while she would see one stagger by none the wiser and she would let it pass, thankful for the narrowly missed confrontation. The shirt she had lifted to cover her nose and mouth did nothing for the stinging sand blinding her eyes or the deafening thuds of her own heartbeat leaping out of her chest. Sometimes, pretending to be brave was just as good as the real thing. She would need that composure when the dust finally cleared.

Though the dust was heavy, the beating chopper blades augmented the closer they came to the bank, and faintly, flashing landing lights beckoned them to the exact spot. Chris caught a second wind and jogged up alongside Sheva. His heavy footsteps whirled her around in alarm but his coarse whisper was remedial. He wasn't talking to her, however.

"Stay put. We're almost there." His voice was sturdy and commanding, despite him trying to catch his breath between words. He had taken Jill's earpiece for himself. The conversation was with the pilot. Then he added rather desperately, "Please don't leave." Worry. Sheva had never heard him do that and it deadened some of the confidence she had in herself. She never realized how much of his she fed off of. It wasn't much unlike the relationship she used to share with Josh. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, barely taking in his tired and sloping form, too tired to even lift his eyes to hers and in that moment she realized she had been right about him being a superhero. It didn't seem he was programmed with a fail switch. It didn't matter if he was worried or tired, he kept going. The admiration for him swelled within her and for a brief moment, she dropped her guard. The helicopter was so close she could almost feel the wind fanning toward them.

Chris saw the maniji streaming out the fog of dust from their left before Sheva did.

"Sheva!" He cried, lurching away from her. Jill's weight and his exhaustion made his struggle to stay afoot brief; he toppled over with Jill still clutched in his arms. The majini wrestled with a started Sheva for the machine gun. She pulled in on the trigger and managed to get a few rounds into him before the nozzle went up. She threw her face away from the barrel and emptied the cartridge into thin air.

Chris sat up and eased Jill from his lap, rising to throw himself into the majini. The tackle was forceful enough to detach the majini from Sheva. She stumbled backward with the empty machine gun clutched in her hands. Chris mounted the maniji and pinned one of its arms beneath his knee. The fresh was thin and crackling like old parchment, reminding him of the subhuman hostiles he met in Racoon City. But then, his opposition lacked the vigor of Uroboros. Wrestling with this corpse was like fighting any other able bodied man.

"Chris! Move out of the way!" He dared to glance back at Sheva and saw the butt of the machine gun driving toward him. He rolled off just as the majini sat up to meet the end of the gun. She drove into its face with such force, a graphic expulsion of teeth bodily discharge sprayed onto her. The brittle skull parted like an eggshell, taking the machine gun with it when the body slumped back on the ground. When she looked up, the beam from the gun light faintly lit the narrow alley of which they were at the mouth, revealing a herd of majini making sense of their appearance. Chris scrambled back on his haunches before rising to his feet, pulling Sheva off the lifeless body.

"Just run," he commanded.

Propelled only by desperation, it seemed her legs had little to do with moving her body. At this point, running was their last option. She paused to see Chris scooping up Jill's body from the ground. The majini fell upon him like flies but he insisted for her to go and not look back. Looking back would only slow her down. She would only turn back to help. Least they all suffer the same fate, Chris hollered for her to keep running. He could ignore the blows dealt to him, bounding off his flesh as though he was made of rubber. There was too much adrenaline in him for a few pawing hands to slow him.

He didn't know how close they were behind him, or if he was even being followed. He was huffing to keep Sheva's fleeting figure in sight. It was an effort to keep Jill from slipping from his weakening grasp. His arms trembled to support her and his knees buckled under her weight but somehow he was right behind Sheva, encouraging her until he felt if he said another word he would collapse. The helicopter was coming into view. He could see the pilot beckoning to them from the hold. Aside from the copter, there was one last TerraSave matatu being loaded near the river bank. With dawn a breath away, the blocky, overstuffed vehicle would never make it past the blast radius. Despite this truth, Sheva found herself slowing to consider her options. Chris didn't realise he had darted past her until he collapsed into the holding area of the copter, spilling Jill into the awaiting arms of the pilot. He could barely even pull himself up.

By the time he slugged into the helicopter, the pilot had already propped Jill against the siding and was heading back to the controls. Sheva, however, found herself hesitating at the mouth of the fuselage. How the very sight of Chris straining to move his own weight into the helicopter drew her to him: to the prospect of safety, to freedom, to life anew. Yes, she was BSAA and thusly a life prioritized. But she was still African. Her sole purpose of breaching the dividing gate was to rescue her people and now in their midst, she would defeat her own purpose if she boarded the helicopter with Chris and Jill. She took her foot down from the lip of the fuselage. If she thought about it any longer she would submit to cowardice and board with them.

"Is she okay?" She spoke alas, trying to be heard over the silencing chop of helicopter blades. Chris leaned over Jill and nodded tiredly after a quick scan over her.

"Good. Stay with her!"

"What?" Chris returned. When he looked over his shoulder Sheva was brazenly charging toward the remaining matatu. Immediately, he went to step out after her and found himself suspended. He had to grab onto the frame to keep from toppling out the side.

"Sheva!" He hollered. "No!"

"I can't leave them!" She insisted. "I can't!" She forced herself not to look back and regret.

Chris couldn't believe what he was seeing. She would never abandon her people, even if her decision was more suicidal than selfless. How easy was it for her to turn her back on them and run off with a bus full of refugees and a few minimally armed TerraSave workers?

He would go after her. He would brace the majini again. He would chase her down and drag her back to the helicopter. She would fight him, she may resent him, but she would be with him. He could live with that. He turned his attention to the pilot. "Take us down, now!"

The pilot's head was shaking before he'd even finished the sentence. "Negative. Hostiles," He returned matter-of fact. If Chris wanted to jump, he could jump, but he wasn't landing again.

Chris looked back down at the bank side. He was right. Landing risked his life, Jill's, and the pilot's. He could only watch to see Sheva's small figure disappear into the van with his mouth ajar in aghast and his face growing paler by the moment. He watched it accelerate leaving the majini in its exhaust. He watched until the van was too small to make sense of the shape. He watched until he only imagined that he could still see it, despite their altitude. He watched until finally, with an expression of anguish that escaped him as a mournful groan, he tore himself from the open frame and let his tired body sink down next to Jill's.

Chris was in a daze. If he spent another second at the door he would have gladly toppled out. His heart; deflated, his stomach; in knots. He drew his knees up to his chest and sank his head between them. She didn't even bother to look back.

What had just happened made him ill. He wanted to swear. He wanted to scream. Tear out his hair. Gnash his teeth. Fight. Cry. Laugh, moan. But he could barely lift his head from the entombment of his limbs far less _act_ out the myriad of emotions boiling within him. Any utterance would not have been intelligible. For an endless moment, he managed to separate from his existence and escape the tethers of life. He sat there, as disconnected as Jill for so long the next time he lifted his eyes dawn was breaking.

For the final time in Kent, a bomb was deployed. It wailed its way into the area and landed muffled. The sterilization as promised was beginning. Chris never bothered to get up or acknowledge the terrified moaning from the pilot. The earth was rumbling when the turbulence became violent moments later as the blast radius met them, bounding Chris into the roof of the cargo hold and tilting the helicopter savagely, threatening to tear it from the sky. Chris latched onto Jill to manage the tumult, his other arm slipped through the loop of support straps lining the side. He may have joined the pilot in a hodgepodge of crass prayer and religious exclaim as they struggled to keep their senses in the whirling chopper. With some expert experience flying and a lot of luck, the pilot guided them down to the deserted sand in a less than graceful landing.

Knowing what next was to follow, Chris flew to the window of the cabin door to watch as the bulging clouds expanded toward them in a sandstorm, pelting the helicopter with the obliteration of Kent. It swallowed them like a heavy fog, blinding them, grounding them, humbling them. The little rescue chopper resisted against the winds until the landing skids rooted into the rising sand and whirred it to a stop.

Chris' heart was thudding like a drum. The pilot, eyes wide, turned in his seat slowly as if he half expected his company to be dead from knocking about like marbles in the cargo hold. It was just as surprising to see Chris sitting straight up, eyes on the blink of madness staring back at him. And Jill, Jill was still blissfully unaware. In the entire ruckus, she hadn't stirred.

Chris laughed.

* * *

Jill stood back from the painting on the wall and set her hands on her hips. It was an abstract piece, bursting with color and random strikes on a plain canvas, but it was the only thing left on the sprawling white wall in front of her.

"Chris, are you attached to this?" She asked, barely glancing over her shoulder at the figure on the couch just behind her. When he didn't respond she shrugged and gifted it to him. Most of the things in Chris' now very bland and basic apartment were hers. It now sat barren, devoid of sweeping floor length curtains and wall décor, modern themed lamps, throw pillows and specialty rugs. Everyday a bit of life ferried out of the apartment in her arms or in boxes, a move Chris assisted with the vigor of a dying man.

At her feet sat the last remaining box of her things. It felt good to be moving out of his apartment. She could finally start living her life independently, without feigning emotions although she owed her current state of health to him. She wouldn't be alive to make this move had he not quite literally carried her out of Kent in his arms. Thanking a man who believed acts of selflessness and heroism were second nature was difficult. He grumbled at the topic, made no mention of himself in the retelling, and seemed aggravated when hailed or revered for his actions.

She scooped up the box and went over to what was left of Chris, slumped over his knees with the remote clasped in his hands. He was obsessed with any coverage of Kijuju and sat watching eight simultaneous happenings on the interactive NewsMix channel until he nodded off, and the TV watched him instead. Watching him deteriorate was amazingly tragic but no one seemed able to pull him from the slippery slope of depression. Not even Jill, who was in the process of learning to recover herself. She definitely didn't have enough in her for the both of them. She put her hand on his shoulder for his attention but he barely flinched under her touch.

"I'm leaving."

He didn't tear his eyes from the screen. She rolled her eyes and started to move off when she felt his hand cover hers gently and take hold of her fingers.

"They're about to release more names…" He said lowly. "Stay."

She could feel every muscle in his body tense for the devastating impact one name would have on him. _Sheva Alomar. _He put up the volume. Jill stood still behind him clutching his hand and praying to be disappointed. As images of refugees seeking asylum in neighboring countries flicked across the screen, a reporter solemnly released the names of more American soldiers and BSAA found dead in Kijuju. It was a short list, but there was no mention of the name he longed to hear. He released her hand with a sigh and sat back in the couch.

Jill didn't know what to say but she tried anyway. "Chris…this isn't necessarily a bad thing…" It was all she could come up with. He was once again, unresponsive. "See me to the door?" She begged, tilting her head to see his sullen face. He got up begrudgingly and started for the door ahead of her. She couldn't help but notice he was still wearing the ruffled pajama pants and sleeve-less white undershirt from days before. He needed to shave and a haircut wouldn't kill him. The only glimpse of life he had given her was when he joked that his oncoming mustache would make him look regal. That was days ago and his humor fell like a brick soon after saying it.

"Do you need help carrying the box?" He offered, looking in at its contents. A toothbrush holder and a few random articles of clothing didn't seem overpowering but he figured he would ask.

"No…" She spread out an arm and invited him in. He latched onto her greedily and settled against her like a child. He needed a perpetual hug.

"It's okay. Things are gonna be ok."

He nodded, breaking the contact. He was shocked to see Jill's eyes brimming with tears. He couldn't comfort her so he ferried away his eyes. She wiped them away before they could spill.

"Call me if you need _anything._"

He nodded.

"My door is always open," He mumbled, leaning against it. She offered him a smile and brought his face toward hers to kiss him goodbye. When she parted from him she made a face.

"Please shave."

With a dainty wave over her shoulder and a final calling of goodbyes, he closed his door. An echoing click return to him from the hollowness of his apartment but he immediately went to his cell phone to see if BSAA had any updates. Nothing else seemed to matter.

At a two forty-four in the morning, Chris rolled off of the couch and sat up trying to catch himself. Why the devil did he wake up any more? He always felt the same way, met the same disappointment and trolled around his apartment like a somnambulist staring into ennui. He traced his nearly bare walls up the hallway where the influence of Jill faded the closer he got to his bedroom. In it, his bed was crisp and perfectly made, evidence that he hadn't been in it since Jill made it for him out of courtesy days ago. The closet hung open, revealing monotone clothing and disarrayed shoes. He sat down on the edge of the bed, yawning, looking around at what was left of him. He got up, walked to the light switch, turned it on and squinted at the light before turning it off again. He found himself in the bathroom, marveling at the absence of things. He never realized he didn't have a shower curtain before Jill moved in, or floor mats. His attempt at taking a shower consisted of throwing a towel on the floor near the tub. He lost interest in that and stared at his rugged and tattered appearance in the medicine cabinet mirror before him. He barely recognized the sunken eyed, grizzled and frowning man staring back at him through glassy eyes. There was nothing he could do about the discoloured scrapes and bruises blemishing his skin, but he could shave.

At three twelve, the freshly shaved insomniac sat at the computer desk, turning off his messenger. _Shujaa23_ hadn't been on for weeks, so it was no surprise to see her name lacking from his list of BSAA friends. Somehow, he couldn't bring himself to close it. What a waste. What a shame. There was no _Shujaa23_ because there was no Sheva. There was barely any Chris. He never thought he would have to revisit this pain after pining over Jill. Yet, there he was, with his heart folding over, feeling a failure and lacking the strength to turn off the messenger service. If only tears would come.

He had submitted to his long forgotten faith for answers. Was_ she alive_? _Was she dead_? As his hope perished, the nature of his questions transformed._ Did she suffer? Is she still? _The Divine answers with yes, no or wait. The hardest of these to accept is _wait_.

A message box popped open, requesting his permission to chat with an unknown user.

_The user Shujaa24 would like to chat. Do you accept? _

Chris could hardly believe his eyes. The colour rushed back into his cheeks with a vengeance. He almost knocked over his mouse trying to grab for it. This had to be a dream. He couldn't click yes fast enough.

_Shujaa24: My God, Chris! I can't believe you're on right now! _

Of course he was on. He didn't sleep. That didn't change for the better after he got back from Kijuju. He couldn't type fast enough. He didn't want any breaks between them, least she logged off.

_MrBSAA: i can't believe yore on either._

_MrBSAA: I cant believe im talking to you_

_MrBSAA: Sheva?/ Is it really you Please tell me im not dreaming anymore…_

_Shujaa24: No, it really is me. I'm alive. I'm okay._

Excitement flooded into him. There were too many obstructions on his keyboard. He swept the newspapers and piles of printouts onto the floor with trembling hands. This dream would end if he delayed.

_MrBSAA: Tell me again. _

A brief pause. On the other side of the world, Sheva Alomar was brimming with tears. She was in an above ground bunker with a team of TerraSave and a handful of military personnel. They had just got a supply of water and a promise of entry into neighboring countries within the next few days. She wouldn't have her life back for a while. A generator was brought in, and the internet a few hours ago. Their only source to the outside world was a severely distorted Mac laptop. After watching the refugees e-mail friends and family in other parts of the world with a sense of pride, it was finally her turn. She was so accustomed to people looking to her for strength and encouragement that she didn't want any of them to see her tears. She mopped them away before replying.

_Shujaa24: I'm ok. We're all ok. God saw us from the corner of His eyes._

_MrBSAA: I kept checking the bsaa database for your name. You werent there_

_Shujaa24: That's because I'm not dead.  
_

Chris smiled genuinely. No, she wasn't dead.

_MrBSAA: Sheva, i missyou so much. Im glad your ok. _

He beamed at her screen name. She had aged.

_Shujaa24: I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. I can't say it enough. Are you okay, Chris? Jill? How is she?_

_MrBSAA: All fine none beter then me,right now_

If anyone was watching they would have believed Sheva to be mad. At first fighting tears, a moment later, giggling with amusement.

_Shujaa24: Chris, you still can't spell! _She teased.

No, he couldn't. It had little to do with how tired he was or how late it was. The cat was out of the bag and he didn't even care. On the other side of the screen, Sheva stared at her monitor with anticipation. She somehow knew what was coming next. She wanted to do it as desperately as he did. It was the only way to prove that neither of them was talking to a ghost.

_MrBSAA: Turn on your camera. _


End file.
